Free Bridgehead by David Drake Page A

already stowed her own. Selve’s gun was leaned idly against a rack of instruments, out of the interloper’s sight, at least.…
    â€œThe anomalies!” Selve cried with the joy of Archimedes leaping from his bath. “Astor, the feedback, everything—there’s something similar enough to a transport unit upstairs that we modulate it between this one and our own!”
    â€œMadam, are you all right?” asked Louis Gustafson as he moved toward Mrs. Layberg. He collided at the enclosure doorway with Astor. In his determination to reach a person whom he might have injured with his experiment, the old professor shouldered the Traveler aside.
    â€œWhere were you when you transferred?” demanded Astor, a half pace behind Gustafson now but no less intent on Sara Jean Layberg. The big Traveler did not have to ask about the Portal to which the woman had been transported: the circumstances which she had already blurted identified that adequately. Only at the home Portal would there have been armed guards—and the possibility of a stranger returning alive.
    â€œOh, shit,” said Arlene Myaschensky. Her hand closed on Bayar’s wrist for support, though she did not look at the Turk. “The test unit we built in the lab. Oh, shit.”
    â€œWe were in Laboratory, I think it was Three,” Sara Jean said in a clear voice. She seemed to be under control again, though close examination would have shown that her eyes were not focused on anything in the basement. “Danny Cooper had taken me there to wait for”—her arm moved from Mike’s waist to return demurely to the woman’s side—“Mr. Gardner. Something on a table started, I don’t know, buzzing.”
    Mustafa and Arlene had been edging closer while Mrs. Layberg spoke. Now Arlene repeated, “Oh, shit,” under her breath.
    â€œWe were in a, a huge city,” Sara Jean continued. “Then there were women”—she nodded fiercely toward Astor—“with guns, like the ones y-you have. Where have I been? Where have you s-sent me?”
    Gustafson had stopped a stride away from Sara Jean when he saw she was physically all right. Keyliss put a hand on the professor’s shoulder to edge by him. “Sara,” the Traveler said, “through an error which will be corrected at once, you have visited twelve thousand A.D .” Keyliss took a deep breath. “Perhaps we can arrange another visit under more pleasant circumstances.”
    â€œCome, Sara, please,” said Astor, with more firmness than respect. “Take me to where the event occurred at once.” She reached out as if to bodily turn Sara Jean toward the stairwell.
    Mike Gardner interposed his body, though it brought him almost chest to chest with the big Traveler. “I know where it is,” he said flatly. “We built a tabletop unit to spec to see if we could get the same results. I’ll take you to it.”
    Astor stepped back. “All right, Michael,” she said. “So long as we know.” She gestured toward the stairs with a flourish that lay between suggestion and imperiousness.
    The two female Travelers flanked Gardner as he walked away. Professor Gustafson moved with them, almost in step. He said, “How did you duplicate all the apparatus on your own, Michael? I don’t see…”
    â€œWe took feeds from the digital signal generators down here,” said Mustafa to the professor’s back.
    Gardner had his own problems now. His two fellows wobbled with unexpressed relief, however, since the potential disaster of their own experiment seemed to be greeted with interest rather than censure. “But all the power was turned off,” added Arlene, beside Bayar and already at the door. “We hadn’t even tried to run it in a week.”
    Isaac Hoperin was following in the wake of the others headed presumably for the upstairs lab. He paused at the doorway