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doorway. His right forearm landed on the searing hot carpet tack strip and he withdrew, scarred, crying in pain and anguish. The doorway was impassible; he could not go any further. The last thing that registered before the heat and smoke completely obscured his view was Mama, skirt and apron in flames, one blackened arm reaching toward him, crying, “Robbie, get out! Get away! Save yourself! Robbie, get away!”
    He desperately tried once more to get to her but his body would not—could not—endure the heat. His eyes were singed, his lungs were filled with smoke, his limbs were burned and blistered. He got to his knees, coughed hoarsely, retched dryly, fell down again. His senses and emotions, critically overloaded by the physical pain and the hideous spectacle before him, at last tuned out everything and granted him unconsciousness.
    Robin heard neither the sirens in the background nor, mercifully, his mother’s final scream.

Four
    The fugitive scientists gathered in the kitchen area of their private laboratory complex. It was completely underground, well out of the city, and out of reach of Lokus’s troopers, at least for the moment.
    Pan-Li offered to make some tea and busied himself with cups, pots, and strainers. Aurora sat quietly at the small table, crying. Lucinda comforted her, both of them trying to cope with their grief and shock. Denes, his heart forever wounded by the loss of their friends and colleagues, could not sit. He paced, also in silence, his eyes wandering aimlessly about the room.
    When Pan-Li had the water heating, Denes said to him, “Perhaps we should go, um, check the temporal relocator.” Pan-Li gave him a quizzical look. With a slight inclination of his head, Denes indicated the seated women.
    “Ah,” said Pan-Li. “Yes, perhaps we should.”
    They left the kitchen and passed through the dim hallway leading to the laboratory. As they approached the large metal door, it slid back with a slight rasping sound, then slid shut again behind them. They stood looking at each other blankly for a moment.
    “I suppose we may as well actually check the equipment,” Pan-Li said.
    Denes nodded. “I’ll look over the chamber if you’ll check the control room.”
    Pan-Li turned, entered the small room to his left, and began activating the machinery. Lights flickered to life, the familiar electronic hum rising until the door closed. Through the thick glass panes that separated the control room from the transmission chamber area, Pan-Li produced a strained, thoroughly unconvincing smile.
    Denes turned away and walked to the center of the large, mostly empty room. He stopped in front of the chamber, the heart of the temporal relocator, where a subject stood before being ripped from his own time and deposited into another. An enclosed translucent cylinder with thick cables running in all directions from its base, it was large enough for only one person, perhaps two—although that had never been attempted.
    Denes placed a hand on the cool, smooth outside of the chamber and trailed his fingers along its surface as he slowly circled it. Passing the chamber’s entrance panel, he noted with detached satisfaction that his fingertips failed to even register the door’s edge, so perfectly fitted was it to its opening. What had Val-Nar said when she installed it? Oh, yes. Not merely air-tight, she had laughingly called it “time-tight,” allowing no matter, particles, or waves to enter or escape during transmission.
    Denes pictured Val-Nar. Sweet Val, quietest and kindest of them all, the gentle genius who had over two decades ago independently developed the molecular parsing algorithms that made the rest of the thing work. Without her brilliance, none of it would be possible.
    But now she was gone, along with Argus, Kyr, and their leader and mentor, Borok. All gone, murdered by the tyrant Lokus, their precious lives wasted.
    No, not wasted! What his friends had believed in, what they had dreamed of, what