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leader’s authority has always been absolute.”
    “I was able to get a definite statement on that out of Rutherford,” Jason hastened to reassure her. “The relevant provisions of the Temporal Precautionary Act are still good. As mission leader, I’ll have the same legal powers as always.”
    “But,” Da Cunha persisted, “this time you’ll have to exercise those powers with someone looking over your shoulder. Someone who can come back and report over your head directly to Kung and the other fatheads on the council.”
    Jason made no reply, for he could think of none that wouldn’t deepen the general gloom. Instead, he chugged what was left of his Scotch and stood up. “Well, it’s time. Chantal, you’ll have to excuse us. Let’s drink up and head for the conference center.”
    Rutherford wouldn’t approve of us getting oiled just before reporting for this meeting , he reflected. To hell with him.
    * * *
    Looking around the large oval table in the conference center, Jason reflected that if it hadn’t been for Nesbit—who was looking insufferably, fatuously cheerful—he wouldn’t have been unhappy with this expedition’s personnel.
    Dr. Henri Boyer was their expert on the Afro-Caribbean syncretic religions. He had already passed all the Authority’s requirements to qualify for a position on Asamoa’s expedition, before losing out to a slightly younger competitor for that position. He regarded this as a second chance, and Jason didn’t anticipate any problems with him. And it had turned out he had a hobby of carpentry, which would stand him in very good stead where they were going.
    Dr. Roderick Grenfell had, of course, also met the requirements. He was of nondescript predominantly European appearance, which as Rutherford had pointed out was all that was needed to fit into the target milieu. He was a specialist in Caribbean history, with an emphasis on the buccaneers of the seventeenth century. By birth, he was the only off-worlder present besides Jason himself, hailing from New Albion, Kappa Reticuli II. In his youth on that frontier world, he had been exposed to some compulsory paramilitary basic training, which afforded Jason a degree of comfort.
    “You’ve all been through the preliminary procedures,” Jason began, “including the biological ‘cleansing’ procedure that is necessary to prevent you from endangering the peoples of the past by introducing more highly evolved disease microorganisms to which they would lack immunity.”
    “Rather like the natives of the Caribbean islands when the Europeans arrived,” Grenfell remarked.
    “That’s the general idea,” Jason nodded. “You have also had your TRDs implanted.” Their expressions told him that they had found the operation distasteful, not because it was painful—which it wasn’t, save for a slight sting on the inner side of the upper left arm—but because it violated their culture’s taboo against implants in general, even passive ones. As usual, it had been explained to them that it made the tiny device impossible to lose. And—also as usual—this had helped, once they had grasped the fact that without the TRD to restore their temporal energy potential they would be stranded in the seventeenth century permanently. Jason saw no reason to go into the one exception he had engineered in the case of Chantal Frey, which was hardly likely to apply in their cases.
    “As you have been told,” Jason continued, “Your TRDs will activate at a preset moment, timed by atomic decay, at which you will return to the linear present, here at the displacer stage. This is always the case, except for Special Operations missions, which are brief and have very specific targets. You may have worried—people always do—that the sudden, unexpected transition will be a little disorienting. Don’t be concerned. I’ll give you warning. As mission leader I have, by grace of an exemption from the Human Integrity Act, a neurally interfaced brain