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impossible. Three thousand-plus years of space travel had taught humanity that much. Was that assump tion wrong? Or were they misreading the data, seeing some thing that wasn ’ t there, while missing things that were?
    The door comm blipped, and Koffield pressed, down the stud on his desk that opened the door, glad of the interruption. It was Lieutenant Sheelton, the defense systems officer, though today he was handling comm duties. Because Chronologic Patrol ships were deliberately designed to allow precious little communications, the standard patrol ships did not even carry full-time comm officers, but instead swapped the duty around the other departments.
    But at the moment the Upholder had a great deal to communicate, and sending her messages, despite the complexities and difficulties, was a top priority.
    “ What have you got for me, Sheelton? ” Koffield asked as he stood up. He returned Sheelton ’ s nervous salute and gestured for him to come forward into the compartment. Koffield forced himself to smile, and forced the smile to look pleasant, sincere. Koffield knew he could not afford to let any member of the crew note his own worries, his own anxieties. He had to create and maintain the illusion that he was calm and confident. He knew damned well that if he crumbled, morale would plummet. And morale was dangerously low to begin with.
    “ Well, ah, good news, I think, sir, ” Sheelton replied, proffering a report pad. Koffield took the pad and sat back down behind his desk. He activated the pad and started to examine it before he glanced up and saw Sheelton still standing there. “ At ease and take a chair, son. ”
    “ Thank you, sir, ” Sheelton said.
    Koffield nodded absently as he scrolled and paged through the report pad ’ s display. “ Four serviceable courier drones? ” he asked. “ That ’ s all we can manage? ”
    “ We ’ re lucky to get that many, ” said Sheelton. “ I thought for sure we ’ d lost all eight drones when we did the first afteraction survey. The drone storage bay got hit hard in the last wave of impacts, sir, and that compartment took a big part of the electromagnetic pulse when the shields burned out. Sorry, sir. ”
    Koffield didn ’ t understand the apology at first—but then he made the connection. Sheelton had been operating the shields during the attack. He looked the young officer straight in the eye. “ Sorry for what? ” he asked. “ Because the shields couldn ’ t absorb and disperse ten times the energy and impact stress they were rated to take? The shields saved this ship, and everyone aboard her. I suggest you remember that, Lieutenant. ”
    “ Ah, yes, sir. I will. ”
    “ Let ’ s get back to the couriers. You report four serviceable drones, assembled by cannibalizing the eight wrecks and by dipping into spare parts. How far into this will I have to read to find how serviceable ‘ serviceable ’ is? ”
    “ I can tell you that right off, sir. You ’ ve got two courier drones that meet all specs and certificates, full backups to all systems. And you ’ ve two others that work, but with a few subsystems that are running without backup, or where main and backup systems are both a little chancy. They ’ d probably do fine on a routine flight—but, well sir, I can ’ t promise you the couriers will have routine flights. ”
    Koffield nodded thoughtfully. Considering how badly the Upholder had been chewed up, he was probably lucky to get one good drone, let alone two good and two fair. “ Very well, ” he said. “ Prepare to send all four of them out, at twenty-four-hour intervals. The first we ’ ll release on this side of the wormhole, with the fullest possible documentation of the attack. Send all our data, copies of the ship ’ s automatic and manual logs, everything. Use the better of the two substandard drones. Then send the other three downtime through the wormhole, into the past, with nothing, and I mean nothing, more than the