Page 56 of Hot Zone

Thirteen

Athena Carswell looked up sharply from the desk in her makeshift office as a loud alarm bell rang out in the main lab. The emergency recall.

She bolted from her desk, scooping up the headband and putting it on her head as she raced for her chair. She sank into it and quickly went through the mental routine to prepare herself for a time jump, while a technician worked frantically at the new computer console.

“It’s Captain Marconi,” the tech reported tersely. “All systems ready. Go!”

Athena nodded, already deep in trance. She reached out, seeking urgently with her mind, following the signal of Tessa’s armband. Hang on, girl. Almost there.

And then a violent burst of energy exploded in front of Athena, both visually and mentally blinding. An indigo flash threw her backward, slamming her back in her armchair and mentally ripping her out of the time stream.

“What the hell was that?” the tech exclaimed as the console lit up like a Christmas tree in front of him.

Horrified, Athena reached out again. No. Not another one. She’d lost twelve travelers, but that was before they worked out the bugs in the system. Time travel was safe now, dammit!

Nothing.

Tessa’s signal was gone. Whatever that massive energy flux had been—and the professor was dead certain it hadn’t been a random glitch in the time stream—it had snatched her right out from under Athena’s nose, ripping her signal away and tossing it God only knew where or when. For all the world, it looked as if the link between them had been attacked.

Athena sagged in her chair, drenched in sweat. In the reflection of the newly cleaned and polished time-travel booth, her face looked gray.

Finally, she roused herself enough to order, “Call Beverly Ashton. We’ve got a problem.”

The sickening sensation of free fall nearly paralyzed Tessa. But then awareness that she had only a few seconds to activate her cuff spurred her past the horror of what was happening.

As she and Rustam fell through space, she plunged her hand into the bag. Cool metal met her fingers. She felt for, and found, the smooth, round crystal of quartz. Her fingertip touched it. Pressed.

Screams erupted above her. The first Greek soldiers had leaped.

A shout erupted from Rustam’s own throat.

Without warning, Tessa was ripped from her body and thrown into a blackness so intense and so cold, she couldn’t breathe. It crushed her, immobilizing her in frozen terror.

What was Athena doing to her? This wasn’t what her first jump, coming to Persia, had been like at all! Pure panic claimed Tessa then and she could form no more thoughts. She struggled desperately to move. To breathe. To catch herself and stop the horrible falling sensation that went on and on and on.

And then there was nothing. No sound. No light. No taste or smell. No sensation of body or not-body. No passage of time. How long she hung out in this featureless void, she had no idea. She was aware of existing, but had no capacity to form conscious thought beyond I am.

And then all of a sudden, a painful impact slammed her back into her body. She was assaulted by sensations—hard ground tumbling sharply beneath her. An unpleasant taste of soil in her mouth. Dirt. Sky. Dirt. Sky. She was rolling over and over. She caught momentary flashes a of rock-strewn, sloping terrain in the dark. She began to register the alternating cushion of a big body beneath her, and then its smashing weight as she and another person tumbled together down the hill.

Conscious thought began to return. Rustam. He was still clutching her against his chest. Were they alive, then? Shock coursed through her. How had they managed that? They’d just fallen off a five-hundred-foot cliff into a boulder-filled gully below.

Their rolling progress slowed, and she glanced around at the mild slope they lay upon. Where in the heck were they? This wasn’t the terrain at the bottom of that cliff. There were no dead Greek soldiers around her. Had she passed out? Had they survived the fall by some miracle, and had Rustam carried her here?

As she continued to return to her senses, her awareness of time came back next. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that they’d stepped off that cliff only an instant before. So how had they ended up here? And where were they? Or maybe the pertinent question was when were they?

Had Athena rescued them from that plunge toward death and sent them to this place instead? Tessa had never heard the professor mention being able to do such a thing. In fact, she seemed to recall Athena commenting longingly that someday she hoped to learn how to do more with the headband than just send people back in time, and then retrieve them again.

Deeply alarmed, Tessa sat up. Or at least tried to. Powerful arms held her in a viselike grip, preventing her from going anywhere. Sprawled on top of Rustam, she stared down at him now.

“Are you all right?” he rasped.

“Yes. You?”

He was breathing shallowly. Like someone in severe pain or bad respiratory distress. Or both. Even in the scant starlight, he looked deathly pale, his cheeks hollow, his eyes sunken in their sockets. He looked terrible.

“Let me go. I’m crushing you and you’re obviously hurt,” she ordered sharply.

His arms fell away without protest, which was a glaring admission from him that he was in serious trouble. He never obeyed her like that.

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