Sir:

      I am intrigued by your recent communiqué requesting records of temporal incidents, given that the USS Crazy Horse has been involved in such events more than once. I have confirmed your security clearance and acknowledge your eligibility to receive non-technical accounts of any such time travel incidents.
     The second experience of my crew with time travel, which you indicated you have previously received, was declassified some time ago by Starfleet. The story of our earlier experience with time travel, while I was First Officer of the Crazy Horse, remains classified. You will no doubt understand that this is because of the hints even a non-technical account might contain about a radical approach to time travel that can be highly unstable and unpredictable, compared to those known by the Federation.
      We were unable to make consistent log entries during our impromptu expedition into the past, long ago, so I have taken the liberty of organizing my thoughts into a simple narrative.
      It began on Stardate 48147. Due to the nature of the story, I might add that it was 2371 in the old dating, or almost a dozen years ago, as I write this. I take the liberty of naming my account after a famous pre-Industrial Age story about travel in time.

Michael Marek, Captain
USS Crazy Horse
Stardate 60284

The Chronic Argonauts
By Michael Marek

I.

     "Intruder alert, intruder alert."
      I was doing some evening administrative work in the First Officer's office, off the corridor between the bridge and the briefing room of the starship Crazy Horse, when that announcement blared throughout the ship. I hit my comm badge.
      "Marek to bridge. Report," I said as I got up from my desk to head for the door.
      "A routine scan of the ship reports two extra sets of life signs on board..." answered Lieutenant Commander Samantha Neal, commanding the evening watch. As I actually entered the rear of the bridge, Sam continued, "...Commander Scott reports security teams are conducting a search."
      "Where'd they come from?" I asked, moving down the left ramp toward the command seat.
      "Sir," said Lieutenant Tim Holman, at tactical. "It's like the new life signs just appeared out of thin air."
      Until recently the USS Crazy Horse had been docked at Jupiter Station. We had been debriefing a recent mission that had, well, complicated ramifications. It was serious enough that Starfleet had called us home to Sector 001, but sensitive enough that they didn't have us return to Earth, proper. We had cleared the Solar System earlier in the day and jumped to moderate warp on a new assignment to provide routine medical checks at several field research stations. We had hardly cleared the Oort Cloud on our way outward.
      "Naiman to bridge," came a voice out of the communication system.
      "Elaine?" I asked, quizzically. The Crazy Horse recreation officer, Commander Elaine Naiman, rarely had occasion to contact the bridge. She presided over our Ten-Forward lounge, which we called "Roddenberry's."
      "You may want to come down here, Michael," she said. "There are a couple of...strangers here you might like to chat with."

      Commander Dolores Scott was in the corridor outside Roddenberry's as I walked up, accompanied by Moira, the Crazy Horse Second Officer. Although Moira was an artificial intelligence in a human simulacrum body, part of her also resided in the ship's computer. Dolores was flanked by several burly men and women from her security teams.
      "Elaine asked us to wait outside. They don't seem dangerous," she shrugged. On the other hand, I could see that she was keeping watch through the ornamental glass of the lounge doors.
      Moira and I entered Roddenberry's and found Elaine sitting at a table with the two men, apparently human. Both were dark haired, one in his 30s and the other maybe a decade older. The younger wore a green turtleneck shirt. The older wore some sort of jacket, but it looked like a very old style. They stood slowly, looking uneasy, as I approached.
      "Commander," said Elaine. "I'd like you to meet Douglas Phillips and Anthony Newman. They fell out of the ceiling a few minutes ago." She rose to her feet and sauntered to the bar, leaving the four of us to ourselves.
      The men gave each other a significant glance, then held out their hands to shake. Phillips was the older and Newman the younger. Moira and I also gave each other a significant glance and returned the handshakes. Both of their grips were firm, but not aggressive.
      "I'm Michael Marek, first officer of this vessel, although the captain is away from the ship for an extended assignment, so you might say I'm in charge. This is our second officer, Commander Moira. Would you gentlemen care to tell us where you came from and what you are doing on our ship?" I asked.
      "We're time travelers," said the younger, Newman, "from the year 1969. We left in 1968, but we've been lost in time for over a year."
      "I thought we agreed we weren't going to blurt that out anymore," muttered Phillips to his companion.
      "Can you tell us what year it is, and where we are?" continued Newman, enthusiastically.
      "You are on the starship Crazy Horse. I'm afraid we're outward bound from the Solar System," I said. "The year is a little more complicated, since we don't use years much for timekeeping anymore." I glanced at Moira.
      "It's the equivalent of," she glanced at the ceiling for split second, as if calculating, "the year 2371."
      "Over four hundred years!" exclaimed Newman. "Doug, we've never jumped that far before."
      "We don't really know how far into the future the Tunnel is capable of functioning," nodded Phillips.
      "And a ship named after Crazy Horse!" added Newman. "We met him, didn't we?"
      Phillips nodded.
      "What's she doing?" asked Newman, pointing at Moira, who had slipped out a tricorder.
      "I'm conducting a non-invasive scan of your vital signs," she explained. She glanced at me and added, "They're human and their bodies contain traces of chroniton particles. They may be what they claim."
      Elaine was returning with a tray, glasses, and several bottles.
      "Let's sit down, gentlemen," I said, gesturing toward the table, "and explain things to each other a bit better. And ladies of course," I added, when I heard Moira sniff. As an afterthought, I used my comm badge to connect to Commander Charlotte Jerscheid, the Crazy Horse Science Officer.
      "I'm busy," she said immediately, thinking it was a private conversation.
      "Charlotte," I said, hoping she was still listening. "Moira and I are having drinks in Roddenberry's with two people who appear to be time travelers from the year 1969. Is there any chance you could you possibly join us?"
      "I'm on my way."

      "We're part of a top secret project that developed an experimental way to travel in time," said Phillips, after Charlotte had joined us hurriedly. "We were under pressure from the government to deliver results and, well, we haven't been able to get back."
      "We're still in contact with them," added Newman. "At least, they can monitor us and get messages to us on rare occasions. If we get in trouble, they jump us to another time."
      "And we get in trouble with depressing regularity," nodded Newman. "It's like there's a magnet pulling us toward dangerous historical events."
      "I'm not aware of any dangers threatening us at the moment," I shrugged, looking around for effect. Seen through the big ports, the particles of matter zooming toward the ship as we sped along at warp attracted glances from both men. I remember how impressive it was the first time I saw it straight on through actual transparent aluminum, not just on a view screen.
      "So...where and when have you been?" Charlotte asked the men, with deceptive casualness.
      Krakatoa, the Battle of New Orleans, the Titanic, Troy, the Alamo, even some other spaceships were included in the list of times and places the two men claimed to have visited. Twice more, Elaine had additional bottles brought before the time travelers wound down their stories. If these two could be believed, their people in 1969 even had the ability to watch us as we sat there talking, a somewhat unsettling idea. It was after midnight when we escorted our two guests to VIP quarters. Moira, Charlotte, and I agreed to meet for breakfast, which we did at 0700 in my quarters.
     

II.

      "We scanned them in detail as they slept," reported Moira, who had worked the problem all night long in her computer self. "We found nothing inconsistent with their claims to be native to the mid-20th century and several things that support them. Just as an isolated example, their bodies contain the Tuberculosis bacteria, latent but present, although long eradicated in our time. It is not infectious. Several trace elements in their bodies are also suggestive of environmental pollutants in the mid-20th Century."
      "Is there any evidence that we're being observed through time somehow?" asked Charlotte.
      Moira shrugged. "I haven't been able to figure out what kind of particle emissions they might be using or what other...medium they might have. I'll get the twerp, or I should say Dr. Newman, alone this morning and question him. It's not like we had a technical conversation last night."
      "Tell us more about the chronitons," I asked while taking a couple more sausages.
      "They have about five times the level in their bodies than we would expect, based on the few temporal incidents experienced by Starfleet crews," she said. "On the other hand, they claim that they somehow float unprotected in a temporal ether between 'jumps' which could certainly cause them to absorb more than if they were protected by a ship."
      "So what do we do with them?" I asked, looking back and forth between the women.
      "Help them get home?" suggested Charlotte.
      "Take them to 1969?" I asked, shaking my head. "I don't really want to have the ship do that warp-around-the-sun thing."
      "I was more thinking about learning what their technology is," Charlotte replied. "It would prove their story and might help us help them get home. They seem to have discovered some alternative approach that isn't part of our standard knowledge base. If we can figure out what they're doing, I'll bet that we can do it better."
      "Whatever they're doing, it's obviously hard for them to control," mused Moira. "It probably won't be of any practical value to us. However, it might be based on some tiny aspect of physics that has escaped the attention of Federation science. It would be nice to know, for sure."
      "Well, I have shift change in a few minutes," I said, checking my PADD. "Moira, when you get off duty, kindly call on our guests and invite them to the briefing room at ten hundred hours."
      Moira had joined us in her simulacrum body. In holographic form, she was simultaneously present on the bridge, commanding the overnight shift. Her consciousness was also constantly in the computer core. It used to confuse me, having three or more Moiras functioning simultaneously. I've even seen her argue with herself.

      We ended up meeting in holodeck 47, rather than the briefing room, at Moira's request. I was the last to arrive and entered into a cavernous chamber. The focal point was a huge construct of oval rings, decreasing in diameter as they increased in distance from some control consoles. The "tunnel" almost looked as if it continued to infinity. It actually did look a bit like a tunnel, made of alternating dark and light bands, and I saw it was possible to walk into it. Beyond the consoles was an elaborate latticework of equipment that pulsed and glowed. The nearer equipment also sparkled with lights and view screen displays. A large orange insignia was painted on the floor, looking like a stylized hourglass.
      "Welcome to Project Tic-toc," said Moira as I approached the group. "Our guests described it and I programmed it."
      "It's perfect," said Phillips, who stood nearby, looking around in wonder. Newman nodded in agreement. They both wandered to the consoles on the far side of the open space before the tunnel.
      "We've queried the Federation database," said Charlotte, "and there are only a few obscure scraps of information about the project, but we did find a picture of this chamber. The information confirms their story. Starting in the late 1950s, the project was built underground in northwest Arizona. It eventually had thousands of people assigned to it, but operated at the absolute highest level of security. Doctors Douglas Phillips and Anthony Newman are names associated with the project. There is no record of what research the project did or what eventually happened to it. It certainly never became public. What does exist was buried DEEP in the archives, on real paper, never indexed by computer. The archivists were thrilled to get our information request because of the challenge it presented.
      "You'll get a kick, Mike, out of the fact that an ancestor of James Kirk was involved in the project," Charlotte continued as I gave her a double take -- I'd always wished I could find time to write about the background of the controversial admiral. "Lieutenant General Heywood 'Woody' Kirk. It was a military project and he was in command."
      "Dr. Newman," said Moira (mouthing "the Twerp" silently), "explained the theoretical basis behind their tunnel. It is an intriguing application of certain obscure principles, but it is inherently unstable. Dangerously so. The core of the system is an energy converter that stretches almost a mile beneath us." She pointed over a nearby railing and downward to a space open as far as we could see. "See that 'glowy thing' down there?" she continued. "It's filled with proto-matter."
      "Oh, that's not good," I said, recoiling mentally if not physically.
      "It's incredible that they've kept it under as much control as they have," said Charlotte. "It is highly unlikely that their own technology will ever get them home."
      "I assume that you are not having the holodeck insert real proto-matter down there," I said.
      "Of course not," Moira almost snorted.
      "We heard that," said Phillips, walking toward us, with Newman beside him. "It's a bitter pill to discover that we were working in the wrong direction."
      "I understand," reassured Charlotte, "but I'm afraid you were. Every time your people activated the tunnel, there was a risk of a temporal cascade that would have made one of your nuclear explosions look like...well, like somebody sneezed."
      "It was nice to have hope for a little bit that you could help us," said Newman, shaking his head. "Can you at least take us back to Earth so we can...?"
      "Excuse me," interrupted Moira. "She didn't say we couldn't help you. She said we wouldn't use YOUR technology. Or at least, not your power system."
      "But if you won't or can't use...well, you call it proto-matter..." started Phillips.
      "The tunnel chamber itself is crude by our standards, but it will work," said Charlotte, pointing at the holodeck tunnel. "You might call this the 'front end' of the system. For the 'back end' we can use the warp engines. If nobody told you, that's a controlled matter-anti-matter reaction. It will power the tunnel, no problem."
      "You're saying this," Phillips gestured around the holodeck, "isn't just for show? You can make it work?"
      "I believe so," nodded Moira. "It's based on your theories and our technology, packaged so that it looks like your control systems. But we'll have to make the attempt when we're not in warp," she said, looking at me.
      "And the further from Earth we are, the more power it takes," Charlotte added. "Can you talk to the Admiral for us, assuming the Captain's not available?"
      "I suppose I should," I said halfway to myself, putting my hand to my face and rubbing my mouth as I stared speculatively at the tunnel.
      "Doug," said Newman. "I just realized. If this equipment works, we should be able to use it to contact our tunnel." He looked at me. "It should only take a fraction of the power a jump does. We realized a long time ago that two tunnels could connect to each other in resonance, but we've never had a chance to make a straightforward connection to a second tunnel."
      "You're right," Doug frowned, "but it's hard to imagine something made of light and force fields actually functioning as a time tunnel."
      "Ladies?" I asked, looking at Charlotte and Moira. They looked at each other.
      "Sure," they said together and walked over to the controls. They sat and put their heads together. When Newman tried to show them something on the controls, Moira shooed him away. Moments later, two curved bars I hadn't noticed at the sides of the front of the tunnel moved together and an image started to form. Sound came through, too, but only spotty words and phrases, like "refine your focus, Ann.'"
      In a little bit, the image cleared and we were looking at another tunnel chamber, very similar to ours, except that other people were at the controls -- a woman in a white lab coat and a man standing behind her, also wearing a lab coat, and another man in a military uniform.
      Moira pointed at Phillips.
      "General Kirk," Phillips said. "Can you hear me? It's Doug Phillips."
      "We hear you, Doug, and we see you too, but we don't understand," came the man's voice back.
      "We've been searching for you for hours," said the woman, presumably Dr. Ann McGregor from the time travelers' descriptions of their colleagues the previous evening, "and there hasn't been anything until a minute ago when all of a sudden, there you were."
      "It's OK, Ann," said Phillips, with tenderness in his voice. Was there a hint of a relationship there? "We're safe, over 400 years in the future on a spaceship. They've adapted our technology into a working tunnel, and made it look just like our own."
      "How's that possible?" asked the other man, who I took to be Dr. Ray Swain.
      "It's complicated," threw in Tony. "But they think they can help us get home. They can give you the exact time coordinates, along with a temporal beacon so you can synch with this tunnel and retrieve us."
      I stepped forward.
      "I am in command of this ship," I said. "Commander Michael Marek. Yes, we believe that we can help your colleagues get home, but not right at this moment. There are some preparations we have to make on this end."
      "We probably need to exchange some information back and forth, too," said Charlotte. "To make this work, we need to synchronize the two tunnels at the nanosecond level of accuracy, and that may take some time to fine tune."
      "How's our power consumption?" I asked in an aside to Moira.
      "No problem," she said. "We can keep the link open indefinitely, as far as our end is concerned."
      "They should be OK on their end, too," said Newman. "At least I think so. Ann, what's your average drawdown parameter look like?"
      "We're OK, Tony," she said after looking at her control board for a few moments. "Around 10%, but that's no higher than we've been operating continuously since you...got lost."
      "Good," I said, mostly addressing Phillips. "Maybe your people can talk to my people while I go explain to Starfleet Headquarters. We're under task and I can't divert and drop out of warp without their knowing, particularly this close to home."
     

III.

      I suspected that the director of operations was beginning to wonder what curve ball I would throw at her next.
      "We just sent you off on a routine assignment, commander," she said when I explained the situation to her via comm link. "Trust the Crazy Horse to throw us for a loop."
      "It's not like we went looking for a side mission, sir," I said with a respectful shrug.
      "Of course, of course," she assured me. "But you seem to have a knack for stumbling across the...unusual."
      "I like to think that we're relatively good are coping with the unusual," I suggested, and added with a grin, "We haven't blown up the ship yet."
      "I would rather you not, commander," she said, dryly. "Alright, I authorize you to delay your current schedule of ports of call in order to render assistance to these time travelers, as long as you document the bona fide nature of their claims, and help them return safely to their own time. We'll want a full scientific report on their technology, as well."

      Accordingly, I diverted Crazy Horse back toward the solar system, preparatory to executing the time jump. Charlotte and Moira stayed in almost continuous dialog with the 1969 tunnel crew. In one brief break, Charlotte told me that she was nervous about the other tunnel.
      "They don't really know what they're doing," she said, shaking her head. "Look at their converter cross-eyed and it could go wonky. We've explained the huge problems with protomatter as best we can to Doug and Tony and they're starting to get it. They've already agreed that when they get home, they'll do what they can to close down the project. But I'm holding my breath until we can disconnect and shut our end down. Moira and I are going to erase the program on THIS end when we're done. Proto-matter is no joke and NOBODY finds out the details of how this works. Right?"
      "Oh, certainly," I agreed. "I worked in engineering on the Berlin, you'll remember."
      "Yes," she said, nodding, "and you know a lot more than you pretend to."
      I just gave her a grin and she headed back to the holodeck.

      We scheduled the jump for the next morning. There were a good number of spectators lining the periphery of the holodeck tunnel chamber as the time of departure for Doug and Tony neared.
      "Commander," said Doug as the moment approached. "You have our undying gratitude. As fascinating as our 'leaps' through time have been, it's been wearing. Stressful. I don't know how much longer we could have..."
      "We're happy to help, Doctor," I interrupted. "It's more than time for you to be back home."
      He nodded and the two men walked into the tunnel, moving several meters toward the back. When the time came, it was simple. Somebody on the other end did something and the two men just disappeared, silently. Oddly enough, the clothing we had issued them blurred and for a moment, they seemed to be dressed as they had been when they first arrived. In an instant, though, they were gone, not like the slow fadeout a transporter would have employed. Through the tunnel connection, we heard explosions and our view was obscured by smoke of some kind at the other end. Then there were cheers, handshakes, and Ann McGregor was unabashedly in Doug Phillips' arms. Grinning, Newman turned to the tunnel and addressed us.
      "We're home!" he called to us, exuberantly. "I don't have words to thank you enough."
      "That's quite alright, Doctor," I started to say, but there was a shout of alarm from behind Newman.
      "What it is, Jerry?" called Newman. Phillips and McGregor also broke their clench.
      "It's the core," replied the man named Jerry, with alarm. "It's not shutting down like it should after a jump."
      The people at the other tunnel converged on a set of controls.
      "Crazy Horse," shouted Phillips a few moments later. "The proto-matter's cascading. We can't stop it."
      "Oh, no," murmured Charlotte in horror.
      Moira closed her eyes, a signal that she was accessing large amounts of data.
      "We're already picking up traces of temporal distortion," she said in a dull voice. "Centered on mid-1969."
      "It'll propagate slowly, at first," said Charlotte, mortification in her voice. "Radiating out from 1969 through the timelines. Probably through all of the parallel timelines in the multiverse. They might have as many as a few days on their end, but eventually the distortion will be so strong that the timelines will begin...melting together. Not a good thing.
      "From what I understand," continued Charlotte, addressing Phillips, "you've never sent someone through the tunnel, lost your time fix, got it back, and then brought the person back. This is a first. Maybe that's why this hasn't happened before."
      "Do you have any ideas, Crazy Horse?" asked Phillips, urgently. "Tell us how we can stop this."
      "I don't think you can," said Moira, shaking her head. "Not without equipment you don't have and the experience to use it."
      The people in the other tunnel looked at each other in dread.
      "Then we should go there and do it," I said, making a decision. "Can we?"
      "Um," said Moira, uncharacteristically stalling. "I think so. If we can get there, we've got the scanners we need to analyze the cascade, and if we can do that, we can probably set up a strong enough dampening field. The equipment's not really that bulky, but fine tuning the dampening field will be tricky and we'll need serious power on their end."
      "We have priority on the full output of Hoover Dam," offered General Kirk, listening in through the link. "Two gigawatts."
      "We can make do with that," said Charlotte.
      "Prepare the Away Team," I ordered Moira and Charlotte. I turned away. "Marek to Engineering."
      "Brown here," came the reply from the chief engineer through the comm. system.
      "Ray," I said. "I need you to take command of the ship, and report to Holodeck 47 on the double."
      "The Moira in the ship's computer just told us what the deal is," replied Ray, grimly. "I'm on my way."
      "Marek to bridge," I continued, tapping the comm badge again to switch circuits.
      "Aye, sir," replied Lieutenant Baker, the officer of the day.
      "All stop," I ordered.
      "Aye, sir," replied Baker crisply. "Answering All Stop."
      "Commander Brown will be taking command," I advised. "We have an... unconventional Away Team mission departing shortly. He'll explain everything."
      "Of course, sir," Baker said. The details about the time travelers had spread through the ship like a tsunami. "We'll take care of the ship while you're gone."
      I was just relaxing for a moment after giving these orders, beginning to wonder how soon Charlotte and Moira would be ready to leave when the holodeck arch appeared and Lieutenants Samantha Neal and Marina Lemar entered the chamber. They rushed up to me and came right to the point.
      "Please, sir, take us with you," Sam said, speaking for both of them.
      I was distracted and wasn't sure I had heard her right. "What?"
      "You need us, sir," Sam said. "We know 1969 better than anybody else on the crew. We can help."
      I must have looked quizzical because Marina added, "SCA - the Society for Creative Anachronism. We spend several weekends a year in 1969, on the holodeck at least. Please let us come, sir. We'll never get a chance to visit the real 1969 again." She gave that look that only Marina can.

      Sigh. So I'm a sucker, at least for people who are like family to me. Funny how that happened in the barely two years I'd been on the Crazy Horse. The Away Team, therefore, consisted of myself, Moira, Charlotte, Sam, and Marina. We took a few moments to review the Starfleet Temporal Incident Protocols then entered the tunnel, with Ray Brown and a team from engineering at the controls. We were carrying modest sized cases containing the gear we needed.
      "I don't know if you'll be able to monitor our progress or not," explained Moira. "The distortion may be too strong, already. If you lose us, you should be able to pick us up again after we shut down the cascade."
      "We'll keep an around-the-clock watch, regardless," Ray promised. "This system is interesting. If it weren't so deadly, it would be fun to redesign it using our own interfaces." He saw my disapproving expression and added, "Or not," with a smile.
      "Take care of the ship, Ray," I said and he gave me an reassuring nod.
      The four women and I stepped into the tunnel and walked toward the back. There was an "X" painted on the floor where we were supposed to stop.
      The lieutenant at the tunnel controls counted down from ten. At zero, explosions surrounded us and smoke spewed forth. The Crazy Horse vanished from around us. For a few moments we were weightless, drifting in a swirl of colors and shapes. Then, gravity took hold again and we were dropping to the ground. And it WAS ground -- dirt and grass and a few dandelions.
      "I have a bad feeling about this," Charlotte said, as she looked up and saw blue sky through a canopy of trees.
     

IV.

      I stood and tried to get my bearings. We were in a city, a park actually, it seemed. The sun was high in the sky, meaning midday. The terrain was sloping - DOWN was that way, probably toward the West, given the sun angle. There was a rock outcrop nearby, possibly why somebody chose this area for a park.
      "Moiiiira," said Charlotte, dragging out the name slowly.
      "Yes, Charlotte?" my first officer said, after a moment.
      "We're not in an underground complex in Arizona, are we?"
      "Um, no, I don't actually believe we are."
      "The time distortion," Charlotte said, a statement, not a question.
      "Uh-huh. We calculated it as closely as we could, but the distortion changes things, second by second. I think you're right."
      We were all on our feet now, looking around uncertainly.
      "Sam," said Marina. "There's a guy over there." She pointed to a young man, maybe 17 years old, who was sitting under a tree a few meters away, playing a guitar. There was a girl a couple of years younger kneeling near him, listening. Sam walked over to them.
      "That was really far out," the guy said, not stopping the riffs he was playing.
      "Yah?" said Samantha, squatting down to talk with him.
      "Yah," he agreed, in a distracted way. "Like you weren't there and then you were. Oh wow, that must have been SOME good stuff we got last night," he added, with a chuckle.
      "Yah," said the girl dreamily, rocking back and forth to the music. She had on denim shorts and a halter-top, with more than one string of beads around her neck as jewelry. The boy wore no shirt, but also had on beads.
      "So, what's with the threads?" the boy asked Sam, not taking his eyes off the guitar strings.
      Sam looked down at her Starfleet uniform, a standard black jumpsuit with red blaze accent. "Oh, it's a work thing," she said, in an off-hand way. "It's a drag."
      "Bummer. Kind'a Establishment, huh?"
      "I dig what'cher sayin', but we're through with that scene for a while. We, uh, we've got a little bread," ventured Sam. "Know any place where we can...get clothes cheap?"
      The girl stretched out her arm to point down a street. "Like, Goodwill to all," she said, with a giggle.

      "We have to get out of these uniforms," Sam said when she rejoined us. "They're...anachronistic." She pointed at the teenagers. "They said there's a used clothing store down this way."
      "Won't a store like that want...money?" asked Charlotte.
      Sam and Marina looked at each other. Marina cleared her throat.
      "Sam and I each have $200 in local money," she said. "At a store like that, it'll be more than enough."
      "The money's replicated," added Sam. "It's a perfect reproduction, down to the molecular level."
      "Why do you have replicated money with you," I asked, narrowing my eyes at them.
      "To buy souvenirs?" Marina said, with a shy shrug. "And stuff."

      Two hours later, we were in mufti. That is to say, we were dressed in ways that Sam and Marina believed were perfectly in accord with contemporary styles and expectations. Moira, it developed, had brought along a complete database on 1969 in her memory. Knowing that she concurred with the fashion choices made me feel a little better.
      They dressed me in denim blue jeans that were wide at the bottoms of the legs. The pants buttoned up the front, rather than the way we do things. My shirt was paisley, with billowy sleeves and I wore a fringed vest. I had a gaudy gold medallion around my neck. Marina said my hair should have been longer, ideally, but that if anybody commented, I was to say, "hey, man, I'm doin' my own thing. Cool?" She and Samantha had argued about whether I should wear a headband. Sam said, "Everybody wears them," while Marina said, "With his hair, he'd look like a nerd-bucket." I made a command decision not to wear a headband.
      All of the women on our team had relatively long hair, in some cases put "up" for duty, but now loose or marginally restrained with headbands, which was apparently not nerdy on their part. Charlotte was wearing hip hugger jeans and a green rib-knit top which Samantha said was called a "poor boy." There was a large colored patch in the shape of a flower blossom attached to one hip. Moira wore a very, very short skirt over some kind of tights, a color-coordinated blouse and an ankle-length jacket. And boots, of course. Sam had jeans on with a surprisingly wide belt, a print top, and was wearing sandals. She had rings on her toes. Marina wore some kind of actual dress, i.e. a one-piece garment with a skirt at the bottom, also showing plenty of leg. She also had a shawl around her shoulders. Beads were everywhere, as were images of flowers on the clothing. We also secured some nondescript bags in which we could carry our equipment, as well as our erstwhile uniforms (which were rolled and packed in one of the "duffle bags").
      Oh, and we determined that we were in San Francisco. It was July 14, 1969.
      "I know that date," I said. "In France it was Bastille Day."
      "The next month or so is full of history-making events," advised Moira. "Such as in six days, the first landing, recorded by history at least, of humans on Earth's Moon."
      "San Francisco is also a center of the youth culture of the day," added Sam. "In fact, it's the holy grail of sex, drugs, and rock and roll music."
      "Free love, expanded consciousness and what you might call the 'ecstatic experience,'" added Marina. "In a way, it's a young people's crusade to save the country, and the world, from war, and from the kind of anger that leads to war and materialism."
      "They don't see things at all as their parents do," said Moira.
      "Do any young people, ever?" I asked with a smile.
      As we talked we were walking back to the park. The sun was setting. Our teenaged friends were gone, but we took possession of a picnic table. The park was slowly filling with people. At the rock outcropping, several people were singing, accompanying themselves on guitars.
      "They'll probably sleep here in the park," commented Samantha as we listened from a distance. "Two summers ago, over 100,000 young people from all over the country came here. When they went home at the end of the summer, they took their new way of looking at things with them - love, personal empowerment, environmentalism, and distrust of authority."
      "Was the authority of this time worthy of distrust?" asked Charlotte.
      "Well, see, there's a war going on in Asia," explained Marina. "The government here is drafting...conscripting...young men to go fight the war, but the war is bogged down. Soldiers are dying, but nothing much is being accomplished." She nodded to the group across the park. "The men don't want to go, and the women don't want their men to go, either."
      "It's the second of three major foreign entanglements between World War II and the Eugenics Wars," said Samantha, hugging her knees to her chest. "It's creepy, knowing the Supermen are out there, right now, in hiding. Khan Singh is a child somewhere."
      "The movement of love, environmentalism, and mistrust of authority that was born here fades out after a few years," added Moira. "But some of the mindset continues. It spawns the multicultural movement and in their mature years, these children will grasp the nettle and begin to address the planetary climatic changes caused by human industry."
      "Fascinating though this is," I interjected gently, "can we talk about out current situation? What are our options?"
      "We've got the money to make a telephone call," said Marina. "But how do you find the phone number of a super-secret military installation?"
      "I think our best bet," chimed in Samantha, "is to just go to Arizona."
      "We're reading the temporal distortion now," said Charlotte, holding a tricorder. No locals were close enough to see it. "With a little work, we should be able to navigate right to their door and ask for Doug. If we can find the transportation to get there, that is."
      "I don't suppose they have free inter-state transportation in this era, do they?" I asked.
      Sam and Marina looked at each other, and then at the same time said, "Leave that to us."

      Sam left the park for a little bit and returned with a supper, of sorts. Hamburgers, enough for all of us. Marina called them "gut bombs," and it took me some time to decipher the etymology of the term.
      After we cleared away our refuse, I looked at Charlotte and said, "Want to go listen to some music?"
      The songs appeared to be a mixture of antiwar sentiment, social comment, and traditional ballads that were already hundreds of years old in 1969. I recognized a few. The people were relaxed, friendly -- mellow, they called it -- and many seemed intoxicated by the pungent fumes of something they were inhaling.
      Charlotte and I actually joined in the singing, as we sat on the lawn, but avoided the fumes. It was not hard to pick up the choruses, and it struck me that even the most bluntly antiwar songs contained visions of hope and I found myself liking these young people more and more.
      Charlotte and I became engaged that night. I won't go into more details than that, except to say that the time seemed right. The ring was waiting back on the Crazy Horse.
     

V.

      Morning found all five of us along a highway. Most were sitting on the grass in the ditch, but Samantha and Marina were standing by the road. Marina held a large sign, made of something called "cardboard." Lettered on the sign were the words, "Have gas money for Arizona." Samantha was waving her thumb at the oncoming vehicles, a gesture she said signaled that we were looking for a ride. I had been told that this activity was called "hitchhiking."
      "'She had made Mack trucks rear back on their axles,'" murmured Moira, mostly to herself, as we waited, "'caused Mercedes-Benzes to forget about Wagner, stopped Cadillacs as cold as a snowman's heart attack.'"
      "What's that?" I asked her, leaning back on the grass. "A poem?"
      "It's from a book, written about seven years from now," she said, "about a fictional young woman who was a consummate hitchhiker."
      "Huh," I acknowledged, wondering how that could fill an entire book. "When it comes to fiction, I'm more thinking about H.G. Wells and The Time Machine."
      "I'm not surprised," she nodded. "It contains an interesting explanation of time as a dimension, over a decade before science accepted the same model. But you know, it wasn't Wells' first time travel story."
      "Really," I raised my eyebrow.
      "Seven years earlier he published a short story called 'The Chronic Argonauts,'" Moira said. "Nowhere near as good a story as The Time Machine. By his definition, we would be 'anachronic," or not from this time."
      "Argonauts," I said, mulling over the word. "Now all we need is a good ship Argos on which to voyage."
      "Remember," said Moira, "the Argos had a magical prow that could foretell the future. According to the myth, the gods placed the ship in the sky, amid the constellations."

      I fidgeted, some, but was surprised that it didn't take long for Sam and Marina to produce a ride -- I recognized our Argos right away as a "pickup truck," a style that existed for as long as there were wheeled vehicles. Sam conferred with the driver for a few moments, then waved us over, saying, "He's goin' our way."
      "I'm not goin' to Arizona," said the driver, a young man wearing work clothes and a straw hat, "but I'll take you 90 miles or so. We deliver organic vegetables to a health food co-op in the city on Tuesdays and Fridays. Keep your money, but someone could ride up front to keep me company," he added, looking inquiringly at Sam. She shrugged and walked around the vehicle to enter the passenger's door.
      "I guess that means we ride back here," I said uncertainly, trying to determine the best method of entry.
      "Step on the back bumper," Marina said, demonstrating by swinging deftly over the tailgate. The rest of is followed suit. The back was not exactly comfortable, but it was a warm day and I expected the breeze to feel good, at least to begin with. Although I had no map to compare them to, I watched the highway signs. We left the San Francisco area on the famous Highway 101, later switching to a narrower highway that led us past Merced.
      As we traveled, the land became broad and open -- almost perfectly flat. I'd flown over the area in my own time and knew that it was the bed of a giant prehistoric sea. The vineyards lined the highway for mile after mile, with their rows of posts and wires on which the grape vines grew.
      The four of us in back eventually gathered at the front of the box, with our backs to the cab. In this way, we were somewhat sheltered from the wind, which soon lost its charm, although it was still too noisy for easy conversation, both because of the wind and because our driver had music blaring from the cab.
      Charlotte and Moira each studied their tricorders, sometimes wordlessly pointing out readings to each other.
      "How's the temporal distortion?" I asked Moira, leading over to be heard.
      "Growing, slowly but steadily," she said, with a frown. "We have maybe two days to get there."

      Our produce truck driver dropped us off eventually, but Charlotte and Moira tried their hands at hitchhiking and we were soon picked up by as unlikely a vehicle as I could have imagined. It was rectangular and boxy. All exterior surfaces that were not windows were covered with painted flowers, flowers of all sizes and shapes, many of them inexpertly applied. There was only one person in the vehicle, leaving plenty of room for our team of five. This time I ended up "sitting in front" in the passenger's seat, talking to the driver, whose name was Joe.
      Joe was big and, well, shaggy is the only way I can describe him, with shoulder length hair that I was thankful was clean, and an untrimmed beard. He wore the ubiquitous blue jeans, some kind of rough cloth tunic, and beads. His size could have made him an imposing, almost ferocious individual with his wild look, but I soon found that he was one of the gentlest men I have ever met.
      The day was warm and the windows were open, producing a cooling breeze of much better character than the wind in the back of the pickup. There was significant noise from the wind and the road.
      "I'm in college -- for the deferment, man," he said, not quite shouting but raising his voice to be heard. "U.C. Santa Cruz. They, like, only give Pass-Fail grades, so that helps keep my draft board happy."
      Joe rambled and I concentrated on his language and phrasing. He seemed to use "man" and "like" as general emphasis words, often several times within the same sentence. But Joe was also a philosopher with firm and sophisticated ideas. He talked about the environment and the need to defend the planet against those who would damage it. He talked about personal freedoms, which he called "doin' your own thing." And he presented a profound vision of the power of love, both sexual love and a more general loving connection among people, as a way of ending war and violence.
      Joe was making his way east, it developed, to attend some kind of large-scale musical event the following month in New York State. "It's gonna, like, be a real turn-on, man," he said with a laugh.
      We rode with Joe for several hours and he also talked at length about the "Chicago Eight," young activists against whom legal charges had recently been filed in connection with antiwar riots at a gathering of political operatives the previous year. Joe was convinced that the real reasons for the riots were excesses by law enforcement officers, probably ordered by their superiors who were tools of the "establishment." But the young people there to argue for their beliefs shouldn't have fought back so vigorously, according to Joe.
      "It was a bad scene, man," he concluded. "But when they hit you on the head with their billyclubs, you should zap 'em right back with super-love."
      I agreed with him whenever it seemed appropriate as a means of drawing him out.
      Joe was a revolutionary, it appeared, but one who looked for social and not political revolution. Joe expounded on the idea of a society without money.
      "A store or a clinic or a restaurant that's, like, free is almost a social art form, man," he said. "Everything is free. You, like, do your own thing, and everybody helps a bit. When people are the means of exchange, instead of money, it's, like, the ultimate street theater, man. It makes us all improvisational life-actors. You do things 'cause it's right, man. Not because somebody pays you or because you need money."
      It sounded a bit like the Earth of my time, actually.
      "It could work, man," I said, testing my command of his dialect. "A society where people don't use money and, like, do what they are good at for the sake of being good."
      Joe looked at me speculatively.

      "Man," he said later, leaning toward me so he could speak more quietly. "You know, I really dig your chicks. They ARE groovy."
      "There, like, not really MINE," I said. "Well, like, maybe the redhead. But the others, well, we just, like, do stuff together."
      "What kind'a stuff?" he asked.
      "Well, important stuff."
      "Stuff that...helps people?" he asked, as if testing me.
      "We like to think so," I said, not sure where he was going with his questions.
      This gave Joe pause to think, apparently, because he was silent for a little while.
      "You know, man," he said, eventually, looking at me. "I can't, like, figure you out. You seem, like, cool, but oh wow, you're kind'a, like, square, too."
      "Like how, man?" I asked.
      "Like, your HAIR, man," he said, making a face. "I cannot DIG how short it is."
      "Hey, man," I said, "I'm doin' my own thing. Cool?"
      "NO, man," he replied, condescendingly. "It's SO establishment."
      "Yah, well," I said, frantically searching through my recently acquired vocabulary. "I had to get it cut for...a special kind'a scene, man. Somethin', we HAD to do," I nodded my head toward the back of the vehicle. "We, like, split as soon as we could."
      I fingered my day's growth of beard, and added, "It'll take a while to, like, grow back, but it's less of a bummer every day. And I've never been doin' my own thing more than I am today."
      "Not sure if I dig," Joe said, skeptically. "You're sayin' you had to LOOK establishment without BEING establishment?"
      "Sometimes you need to be careful about people finding out who you really are," I said, thinking of our own situation.
      Joe drove in silence for a few moments, then added, excitedly, "Oh, I DO dig, man. You're, like, with the Diggers." I had no idea what he meant.
      "I can't say more, man," I replied, with a smile.
      "It's cool, man," he smiled, smugly. "What a gas. Is Charlie gonna groove on this. I've been in the Free Stores lots'a times. Even helped some."
      I nodded in appreciation, totally bemused about what we were talking about.

      We stopped for gasoline and food at a business near the highway, which gave me the opportunity to talk with my companions, out of Joe's hearing. Marina and Sam were inside with Joe.
      "Report?" I asked.
      "The temporal distortion continues to grow at the projected rate," said Moira, studying the device she had brought to analyze the distortion. It was a flat panel, similar to a PADD, but larger. "I've been triangulating, using airport navigational aids to fix our location. I've narrowed the source of the distortion to a few hundred square miles, not far from Hoover Dam, as we expected. But this equipment isn't designed for direction finding. We'll have to..."
      Moira paused. "Charlotte," she said, with suspicion in her eyes. "Hand me the tricorder." She scanned for a few moments and, well, I've never seen our unflappable second officer do a double take before."
      "What the hell is SHE doing here?" Moira asked explosively. "No friggin' way! He never said anything..."
      "Moira," I said, in what I hoped was a calming voice. "What is it?"
      "The USS Enterprise just appeared. Out of nowhere."
      "Here? Now?" I asked. "Picard?"
      "No," Moira almost spat out. "Kirk. NCC-1701. No bloody A, B, C, D, or E. But there was never a mission report. No log entries..."
      Charlotte peered at the tricorder.
      "She's right," Charlotte said, with surprise. "We're picking up their active scan beams. There's a short data code in each one, so there's no doubt."
      "I woke up on that ship," fumed Moira. "Well, the next one, at least. And it was Mom, but same thing, really. I have every detail of every mission she ever went on in memory. There isn't the slightest HINT that she visited 1969. 1970, yes. Gary Seven. Mongo nuclear bomb, yes. 1969, not one scrap."
      "Can they help us?" I asked, fumbling in my pocket. "Our comm badges should work to contact them."
      "No!" shouted both Charlotte and Moira together.
      "Time travelers from different eras meeting could produce terrible paradoxes," added Charlotte. "Besides, we'd probably be where we're going by the time we convince Kirk we are who we say."
      "Kirk was quirky. He'd be liable to beam us up and not let us go, if he had any doubts," said Moira, calming down some and poking at her tricorder. "They came out low, over Nebraska, of all places. But they're probably OK. They're climbing back to orbit. Hum...actually, there may be a way that Enterprise can help us."
      She closed her eyes for several seconds.
      "Yes," said Moira, breaking into a smile. "Their old Multitronic system has oodles of vulnerabilities that I can use to get into their systems without them knowing about it. It won't be hard to get an exact fix on Project Tic-toc now."
      Moira and Charlotte moved off, their heads together in conference. About then, Joe came out of the gasoline business carrying a long, slender bottle of some clear beverage. Marina and Sam came out as well, carrying a paper bag that I hoped contained our lunch. The three of them sat down at a picnic table near the door, so I went over to talk.
      "Hey, Joe," I said as I sat down at the table. "What'cha got?"
      He raised the bottle in a salute to me and said, "The un-cola, man."
      "Yah, man," I smiled, having no idea what he meant. "Say, Joe. How far are you like, gonna to be able to take us?"
      He looked uneasy.
      "You want to go to Arizona, right man?"
      I nodded.
      "See, I was, like, gonna go through Colorado," he said, with a pained expression. "Got a dude in Denver I know -- Charlie. Gonna crash at his pad and hang out for a while. Then we're, like, goin' to Woodstock together."
      "You could take Route 66 and then go up the Front Range to Denver, man," suggested Sam. "Be a lot easier on Alice's engines...I mean engine...not, like, going up and down all those mountains."
      "And we'll give you enough gas money to get you all the way to Denver. Maybe all the way to New York," added Marina. "Save you, like, a lot'a bread."
      "I suppose," he said slowly, clearly not convinced. "But I really like the mountains, see? Serenity, you know, man? The sky and the stars. Figured I'd camp a night or two on the way."
      "Joe, look," I said, as Charlotte and Moira walked up. "I can't tell you more, man, but we've got somethin' really important to do there. Very, very heavy. We don't want you to be uptight about this, but we really need your help."
      "You gonna blow something up?" he asked, wide-eyed, apparently suspecting we might be radical operatives.
      "NO, man!" I stressed, appealing with my eyes to the others for help. "That's not our bag, at all. Kind'a the opposite, really. If we don't, like, get there soon, a lot of people could get hurt. Really bad scene."
      "Please help us, Joe," said Samantha, turning on the maximum charm.
      The others chimed in.
      "It could be the most important thing you've ever done to help other people," coaxed Marina.
      "Please Joe," glowed Moira. "Lives depend on it."
      "Joe," said Charlotte, taking his hand to focus his attention. "They all need your 'super-love.'"
      Joe exhaled slowly.
      "You guys are just, like, too weird," he said, overwhelmed by the appeals of the women. "But you chicks have got your ride."
      We all cheered, I think.
      "Alice's gas paid for?" he asked Marina, and she nodded in the affirmative. "Groovy. Then let's haul ass."
      On the way back to Alice, Charlotte murmured to me, "We've got the exact location and maps from space."
      "Has Moira calmed down?"
      "A little, after she hacked into the Enterprise computer," Charlotte nodded. "She's been secretly watching Spock on the ship's monitors. You know that he mentored her after she woke up, right? She says she's never seen him this young before. I never realized she was such a 'daddy's girl.'"
     

VI.

      Unfortunately, it wasn't quite as easy as simply knocking on the Project Tic-toc door. The installation used the "purloined letter" method of securing itself. There were no fences and no buildings above ground. As Alice purred along across the desert, radar started observing us. Joe didn't even ask questions as Moira called out directions from the back seat, other than why she was playing with an "etch-a-sketch" while navigating.
      Suddenly, as if from nowhere, two jeeps appeared (I've see them in historical records from my own family members who owned similar vehicles). Joe pulled to a stop as soldiers jumped out of the vehicles and leveled weapons at us.
      "Stay here and don't do anything," I cautioned. Then I slowly opened Alice's door and got out, holding my hands out from my sides.
      "This area is restricted government land," said the leader of the soldiers. I later found out his name was Jiggs. "We are taking you into custody."
      "We are here to see Dr. Douglas Phillips," I said. Jiggs frowned.
      "Doug Phillips," I repeated. "You do know that he and Tony Newman are back, don't you? They came back through the Time Tunnel, what? Two days ago?"
      "How do you know those names?" he asked.
      "We're scientists, here to help with the problem. You know there's a big problem, right?"
      "In clothes like that?"
      "LOOK," I said, in my best command voice, pointing my index finger at him repeatedly. "Time is critical, here. Contact Phillips and Newman. Even better, contact General Kirk. Tell them Commander Marek and his team are here. That's M-A-R-E-K! Marek. We won't cause any trouble while you contact General Kirk. But MOVE!"
      Jiggs debated silently for a moment, but then, with a significant glance at his men, turned and walked back to his jeep. He used some kind of communications device.
      "The general says you are VIPs and I should bring you in," said Jiggs when he returned. "My name's Sergeant Jiggs. I'm sorry for this, sir."
      "Think nothing of it, sergeant. You're just doing your job. But now we need to hurry, if you please," I said, with a nod, and returned to Alice.
      "Oh, we're busted, we're busted," moaned Joe, shaking his head. "I knew I should'a headed for Grand Junction. Bad scene, bad scene."
      "No," I tried to reassure him. "Everything's fine. It's groovy. Good scene. Just let them lead us, we're all cool."
      "You wouldn't rat on me, would you?" he asked, nervously.
      "Don't worry," I said. "You'll be on your way in a little bit. And wait 'till you see where we're going. It'll blow your mind. Like, totally."
      I heard Moira in the back seat groan.

      A few miles from where we had been stopped, the jeeps led us down a ramp into the underground complex. Doug and Tony were both there waiting for us, grinning.
      "How'd you find us?" Tony blubbered.
      "We have some tricks up our sleeves," I said. "But we'll have time for small talk later."
      "Certainly," Doug agreed. "Come with us."
      We had to walk farther than I expected, carrying our gear. Doug offered to have guards carry the bags of equipment, but one does not hand off future technology to strangers. Although I had seen it in the holodeck, the giant power core, hundreds of stories high, was impressive. We crossed from one side toward the other on a sort of bridge, several stories below the top of the core. Joe tagged along, not so much because he wanted to, but because the guards nudged him along to keep the visitors all together.
      "Wait," called Moira when we reached the point on the bridge closest to the glowing column of protomatter. "We should set up right here, closest to the cascade."
      Charlotte agreed, so we broke out the equipment we had brought and set it up. We sat on the floor on a half-circle. The local time tunnel team watched, but had the good sense not to interfere as we slowly worked on the problem.
      Charlotte, as science officer, took charge of assigning each of us had a different piece of gear to use.
      "Michael will analyze the protomatter itself," she said, handing me the appropriate device. She continued, handing out the other units. "I'll run the effect dampener, myself. Marina will monitor the temporal distortion. Samantha, track the harmonic resonances. Moira, of course, will observe the big picture via Enterprise."
      To our good luck, the big ship was still in standard orbit above us.
      On instructions from Charlotte, the 20th Century engineers snaked cables across the catwalk to power the dampener. They were bemused when Charlotte showed them that our equipment could tap energy from the cables without physical connection.
      Slowly we charted the scope and parameters of the temporal distortion, and the cascade interaction of the protomatter. Most of the times that Charlotte made an adjustment to the dampener, the parameters scaled back, although occasionally they blipped the wrong way, and we had to figuratively scramble.
      After about two hours, we managed to halt the growth of the temporal distortion. Although still critically serious, it was now stable, allowing us to take a break and "freshen up," as General Kirk put it.

      Joe and I were escorted to a "men's locker room" while the women went to another area nearby. I took a shower and donned my Starfleet uniform. Joe cleaned up, too, although he didn't have a change of clothes handy. He stared openly at my uniform, with its bold black and red colors.
      "Man, who are you?" he asked in astonishment.
      "I can't tell you exactly, Joe," I said, shaking my head slowly. "But we're friends."
      "The sergeant said he's got to check me out and if I'm OK, they'll let me leave," added Joe, anxiously. "I don't like this."
      "Are they going to find something?" I asked.
      "Nothing big," he assured me. "Little stuff. Pot, arrests at protest rallies. But The System doesn't like that kind'a stuff."
      "We'll put in a good word for you," I assured him.
      When we left the locker room, we were escorted to the tunnel complex cafeteria. When the women joined us a few minutes later, also again in uniform, they presented quite the sight as they strode toward us. Joe's jaw dropped. I might add that these were the original black jumpsuit uniforms -- color across the entire torso, not just the shoulders and, well, significantly tighter than our much-appreciated current style.
      "Man," Joe said, with awe in his voice. "I do dig your chicks.
     

VII.

      We worked through the night, making slow, incremental progress on tuning the dampening field to the exact resonances needed to suppress the protomatter cascade. Each adjustment was tiny, based on analysis of parameters in six dimensions. Sometimes the dampening field change had no noticeable effect. Other times, the effect was dramatic and not always desirable.
      A bit after midnight, Moira started and blinked, unwinding from her lotus position.
      "Huh," she harrumphed. "Enterprise is going home."
      "How?" asked Charlotte, not taking here eyes off her instruments.
      "They're about to warp around the Sun," said Moira. "Apparently the first time that's ever been done, by a ship from the Federation, at least. It never occurred to me to ask where the technique originated. I guess I'm not surprised HE's the one who came up with it."
      We managed to continue making progress without the big ship's sensors. The team from the Time Tunnel hung in with us through every minute, even though they could be of no practical assistance. They did offer sandwiches and coffee occasionally - not my favorite Orion Blend, but still enough to keep us going.
      During another break, Doug advised us that they had relinked their tunnel with the one on Crazy Horse. All was well there, he relayed from Ray Brown, which eased my mind. I had been worried about our inability to check in with the ship.
      We were all weary when, around dawn on July 16, the massive power core suddenly went dark, the result of the cascade finally being fully suppressed. Emergency lighting came on a few moments later and we stood and stretched.
      "I don't know how to thank you," said Doug, shaking my hand.
      "How about a place to get some sleep?" I suggested, massaging the back of my neck.
      "We'll arrange it," said General Kirk, who was standing nearby. He frowned, as if an idea had just occurred to him, and looked at his wrist timepiece. "Actually, we may have a special way to thank space travelers from the future, if you can stay awake a little longer. Come this way."

      He led us to a sort of lounge -- really just a glorified intersection of two corridors, but with sofas and a box emitting some kind of inane music and chatter.
      "It's just a commercial," said Kirk. "The coverage will be back in a minute."
      "Is that a television?" asked Charlotte. "I've seen them in museums, but never a working model. The shape seems wrong, though. Aren't the screens supposed to be wider?"
      "This is the only shape TV screens have ever been made in," said Ann, with a shrug.
      The commercial ended and a man's face came on the screen. Walter something, according to the name that appeared at the bottom of the screen.
      "He's the only reporter who really knows what's going on," said someone in the room. "The others all just fake it."
      "Only minutes remain now before the launch of Apollo 11," Walter informed us. "If all goes well, the three astronauts now seated atop the giant Saturn V rocket will soon be on their way to the Moon."
      Walter proceeded to ask someone named Wally a question. Our party found seats and settled in to watch. While I was interested in the rocket launch itself, I was also fascinated by the pageantry with which the event was treated, and judging by the locals watching, the spectacle was not just in the minds of those inside the box. The workers on Project Tic-toc were just as fascinated as we were, appropriate, maybe, because they were the functionaries of one massive scientific project observing the fruits of another.
      In the last few moments before the craft lifted, we were regaled with a dramatic and tension-building countdown, although the chemical engines of the rocket ignited a few seconds before the zero mark.
      "Liftoff. Liftoff of Apollo 11," said an official voice relayed through the television, as people in our lounge applauded. The craft moved ponderously as the engines slowly overcame the inertia of rest. I found myself leaning forward in excitement as the velocity built, the vessel receding into the distance as seen by the ground-based visual pickups, a huge trail of vapor and smoke behind it. Eventually the television switched to animated depictions and then to Walter and Wally grinning and verbally congratulating those responsible for the successful start of the mission.
      "The motion images from this mission didn't survive," commented Charlotte. "No one alive in our time has ever seen this."
      Kirk and some of the others raised their eyebrows at this, but I wasn't ready for a discussion of future events.
      "Thank you, General Kirk," I said, after the craft was reported to be safely in orbit. "I wonder if now you could find us a place to get some sleep."
      "Certainly," Kirk nodded, obviously deciding to hold his questions. We have guest quarters this way..."
     

VIII.

      I awoke in the late afternoon and found a note from Moira. I don't know if Moira sleeps, but at least her A.I. nature means she needs less downtime than the rest of us. When I found her, she notified me of an invitation to dinner, to include our crew and the leaders of Project Tic-toc.
      "It's 'come as you are,'" she mused. "An interesting question in Theoretical Fashionology whether the skin-tight jumpsuit or the white miniskirt is the better 'as I am,' for this group, those being my only choices."
      "It's obvious that we're going to be talking business," I said. "Don't you think we should all be in uniform?"
      She stuck her tongue out at me. "Spoil-sport."

      In addition to the five of us, dinner included General Kirk, Doug and Tony, Ann MacGregor, and Ray Swain. The talk began mostly social, but eventually focused on the tunnel.
      "The protomatter had the potential to disrupt you at almost any time," Moira was saying. "Did anything...odd ever happen, temporally speaking?"
      "Well," said Tony, frowning. "We met Merlin."
      "WHAT?" Charlotte almost yelled.
      "And Machiavelli was at the battle of Gettysburg," he continued.
      "Kripes! You never mentioned this stuff," she fumed. "There was distortion happening from the beginning. Look, you have got to shut this project down."
      "She's right, Woody," said Doug. "We've learned a lot about what they call protomatter, and we're convinced now that it is impossible to control."
      Kirk had apparently been waiting for the right time for his own questions.
      "Tell me, Miss. Jerscheid," he began. "What did you mean when you said that the video of the Apollo launch had not survived? Surely an event like this would be preserved in many archives."
      Charlotte glanced in my direction, signaling with her eyes.
      "General," I said, intervening. "We have strict protocols about what we can say and do here, out of our own time."
      "I assure you that we all have full security clearances," he pressured.
      "In your time, maybe," I said, trying to decide how to proceed. "There are...upheavals ahead."
      "Commander?" said Moira, using my rank to remind me of my duty.
      "I know," I said, looking at her, then returned my gaze to Kirk. "There are upheavals ahead, including one...around a generation from now."
      "You mean Khan Singh?" asked Doug, nearly causing me to do a double take.
      "What do you know about Khan?" I asked.
      "Not much," said Tony. "We once landed in Asia, a few years after he and his followers disappeared."
      "Wars in several areas simultaneously," said Kirk, "but we're not clear who his people were and where they came from."
      "General," I said. "My orders do not allow me to discuss specifics which you do not already know. But Khan must NOT learn of your tunnel technology. He would make it a weapon. He would try to change time in his favor."
      "Everything we've seen leads us to believe that's impossible," said Ann.
      "Khan will be a madman, by your standards," Moira said. "You do not want him mucking around, even trying. Time almost certainly has some...elasticity to it, but who knows what might make it possible to break the timeline. If anyone would make an extreme attempt, he would."
      Kirk looked me in the eye for several moments, then glanced around the others from the Crazy Horse. "It would take a cover-up of unprecedented proportions," he said.
      "But they're right, Woody," urged Doug. "Use the excuse of the design being dangerous, or something, but we have to bury the tunnel, literally and figuratively."
      "Even telling the Pentagon about Khan could be dangerous," added Tony. "If they're ready for him, that could change history, too."
      "Maybe he's not such a twerp after all," Moira whispered to me.

      It took the Time Tunnel team a little longer to convince themselves fully of the need to end their project and to hide its existence completely, but in the end, they promised to make it so. The only loose end left was Joe.
      "He hasn't really seen anything," noted Ray. "We've had college professors and even foreign military officers in the tunnel chamber."
      "They sign secrecy oaths," said the general. "Do you think this kid would honor such an oath?"
      "In my observation," I said, "he has a sophisticated sense of ethics and values. They may not be the same as yours, but I don't have the least doubt that he would keep his word not to tell a secret."
      The general seemed troubled.
      "How about this?" I suggested. "Moira, do you have any records on Joe's future life?"
      "No," she answered. "That's way more detail than I brought in memory. But I can query my other self through the tunnel link to the ship, and have check back to Earth."
      "Do so, if you please," I said. "In the meantime, general, maybe a couple of us could talk with Joe." The general nodded.
      "With all due respect," I added, smiling, "it shouldn't be you. You're too establishment for our gentle giant."

      It was just Charlotte, myself, and Tony who met with Joe, in the cafeteria, a location selected to be non-intimidating. Joe looked back and forth at the people at the table, no doubt understanding that his fate was about to be determined.
      "Who are you guys, anyway?" he asked as he seated himself. "When I first met you I figured you were, like, cool. Now it's like you're part of the establishment. But nobody in the establishment wears Superhero costumes..."
      I knew what Joe meant because I had seen an illustrated publication called The Fantastic Four in the lounge earlier.
      "Joe," Tony said. "Do you know what happened here?"
      "You, like, stopped some kind of big explosion?"
      "Yes," said Charlotte. "And by helping us get here, you helped save a lot of lives."
      "Are they going to let me go?" he asked plaintively.
      "Yes," I said. "If you promise to never tell anyone about this place or what happened here."
      His eyes squinted a bit, as if in suspicion. "I don't trust them, man," he said, eyeing Tony.
      At this point, Moira approached and beckoned to me. I excused myself and went to talk with her.
      "Joe becomes a full professor of philosophy at a Midwest university," she whispered, "and the state chair of an environmental organization called The Nature Conservancy. When he dies, they name a large nature preserve after him."
      I nodded at her and we both returned to the table.
      "I'm not asking you to promise them," I said, looking Joe directly in the eye. "I want you to promise us -- promise me and Charlotte and Moira and Marina and Sam. That's all, man."
      "Nothing bad happened here, Joe," added Charlotte. "It's not like you have to blow the whistle on something. Nobody was hurt, ever. It was a legitimate scientific experiment that didn't work out, but they're shutting it down."
      "That's right," said Tony. "And there won't be any pollution. We'll fill in the underground complex and restore the desert. If you want, I'll meet you here a year from now and if the project isn't completely gone, all bets are off."
      "Not sure the general will, like, go for that deal," ventured Joe.
      "You leave that to me," Tony promised. "Yah, he's old, but he's not a bad guy, for an old fart."
      Joe thought for a moment, then nodded slowly. "Deal."
     

IX.

      The five of us from Crazy Horse escorted Joe back to Alice. The women hugged him, and there may have been a few pecks on the cheeks. Marina handed him a wad of money. He and I shook hands and we watched as he drove across the desert toward the highway, escorted by Tony and a soldier in an Army jeep.
      Our party walked back to the tunnel chamber and began preparations to return home. Moira began data coordination with Ray Brown. Sam and Marina inventoried our gear, to ensure that we left no 24th century technology behind. Charlotte, however, was pensive.
      "What is it?" I asked quietly.
      "I don't want to go home yet," she said wistfully.
      "Why not?"
      "In three days, the first men land on the moon," she answered. "Millions of people will watch it on TV, but we'll miss it. Nobody alive in our time, well except maybe a few Vulcans, has ever seen the live images of the first mission to the Moon. I want to watch, and I want to record everything on my tricorder."
      I remember thinking, "Hum. New fiancée."
      "Correct me if I am wrong," I said, "but can't the tunnel back on the Crazy Horse see into the past?"
      "You said we have to erase the program as soon as we get home," she observed, a bit accusatorially.
      "Well, you know it's the right thing to do," I said. "It would be remarkably dangerous if the details of the technology were to get out."
      "I guess," said Charlotte, with resignation.
      "So as soon as those men are back in lunar orbit from their Moon landing, I'll expect Moira to thoroughly delete and shred the holodeck program files," I said.
      "Really?" she asked, with a growing grin, and I nodded. "I'm glad I'm marrying you."

      Presently, we bid our farewells to the tunnel staff.
      "I'm tempted to ask to come with you," Doug said. "For a physicist, the glimpse into future technology is intriguing."
      "We need you a while longer, Doug," said the general, "to help oversee the shutdown of the project."
      "I know," he said. "Plus I've been thinking of maybe getting another degree, in history this time."
      "How about you?" I asked Tony, who was back from escorting Joe.
      "Who knows," he said, with a smile and a shrug. "Maybe I'll go into law enforcement, or become a lounge singer."
      Hands were shaken among the men and the women exchanged hugs. "Doug will propose on Valentine's Day," I heard Moira whisper to Ann, whose eyes grew wide.
      "Just a minute," said Ray, who was fiddling with some of the controls. "OK, now you can walk into the tunnel."
      "Drizzle, drazzle, drozzel, drome, time for this bunch to go home," murmured the general. The people from 1969 turned their heads to stare at him.
      "Tooter Turtle?" asked Ann.
      The general shrugged. "I watched with my grandkids when they were little."
      Everybody from Project Tic-toc was smiling as we walked to the back of the tunnel. The explosions and smoke came, and were home, on the Crazy Horse holodeck.

      Most of the off-duty crew showed up for the moon landing, and also to admire Charlotte's engagement ring. The spidery-looking craft rode its pillar of exhaust down to the colorless landscape, dodging at the last moment to avoid a boulder-filled crater, then shutting off its engine and dropping the last meter to make the first recorded contact of humans on another world.
      Moira artistically kept varying the view as we saw it through the tunnel, sometimes appearing to look up from the surface of the Moon, sometimes looking over the shoulders of the men in the craft, and sometimes making it appear that we were flying abreast of the craft. Once on the surface, we saw the ship from a distance, up close, peered in the windows, and even checked back to Earth to see the reaction of Walter and Wally.
      Most of us had visited the landing site, of course, protected by force fields from both meteors and from thoughtless tourists. But the centuries of blistering heat, frigid cold, and cosmic rays have worn away at the artifacts left behind. The items we saw now were new and crisp with bright colors punctuating the monochromatic lunar background.
      After a break, Moira moved the time focus a bit and we saw the men laboriously crawl down a leg of their landing craft and both work and play on the surface. We listened to what the historical research said was one of the most misquoted quotes of all time. What started as entertainment for most of the Crazy Horse crew presently transformed into respect and maybe a bit of awe at the accomplishments of these intrepid explorers and the thousands of their team members back on Earth, using pre-Information Age technology.
      In time, they returned to space and their waiting mother craft, traveling back to what a poet once called the "green hills of Earth."

P.S. to Dr. Palmer:

      I hope these notes prove to be of interest to the Daystrom Institute. I expect that each of the temporal incidents you are documenting contains the potential for devastating changes in our familiar timeline (or whatever physicists currently think happens when the fabric of time is altered).
      Our visit to the past took us to a remarkable time and we met some remarkable people. In a time known for turmoil, war, and hostility, we met people who had a bold vision of a future of peace, harmony, and understanding. To whatever extent the human race has managed to approach those goals in our Warp Age, it is satisfying to know first-hand that the seeds of our accomplishments were growing long ago, slowly building the roots that would eventually allow them to flower.

Michael Marek, Captain
USS Crazy Horse
Stardate 60284