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of them reacted with surprise when I told them the outline of our space program, having put men on the moon and an unmanned rover on Mars. That interrupted the session while they had a huddled and heated consultation in the far corner of the room. When they started again, they asked more about powered flight, and when I told them the broad outline of some of the newest aircraft, they were impressed but confused. I could see why.
    Colonel Rossbank had a few questions about the armed forces of my time, but the capabilities I described were so unbelievable he quickly lost interest and lit a cigar. Gordon followed his lead with a cheroot of his own. Meredith sat at a writing desk and took notes, and Thomson, the heavy-set Scottish physicist, remained quiet and paced the room, chewing on the stem of an unlit pipe, his face always in silent motion, alternating between concentration, surprise, disbelief, and then understanding.
    The birdlike Tyndall finally shook his head in exasperation.
    “The story is remarkable for its detail and consistency. Genuinely remarkable. But it is simply beyond belief.”
    “Nonsense,” Thomson said, his first spoken word since my interrogation began. “There is not a thing in the world he describes which is not explainable by direct extrapolation from our own existing scientific principles.”
    Right then I decided the big Scot was my guy. I could have kissed him.
    “Oh, rubbish!” Tyndall snapped back. “This inter-web thing is extrapolation? Of what?”
    “His high capacity computing machines are simply an improvement on our analytic engines, but with mechanical calculation and memory replaced with electric functions. That accounts for both the miniaturization and the higher calculation speed. Electric storage of data is clearly possible, something like that American laddie Smith argued for, recording sounds with permanent magnetic impressions on wire.”
    “Smith? Smith who? What are you talking about?” Tyndall demanded.
    “Oberon Smith, I think he’s called. It was in Electrical World last year, Tyndall. You really should keep up on your professional reading. As to electrical as opposed to mechanical functioning, it’s nothing more than development of a Crookes tube into something more than a curiosity. The American mathematician Charles Pierce has already proposed a means by which logic operations can be carried out by electric switching circuits.”
    Tyndall sniffed and turned away, looking all the more like an offended owl.
    “I’d call that a mighty leap,” he said
    “Aye,” Thomson agreed. “But thus do we advance, by mighty leaps.”
    “And the ability to access these machines from anywhere, without wires?” Bonseller asked, but Tyndall instead of Thomson answered.
    “Obviously some sort of electromagnetic communicator propagated through the aether. I suppose it could utilize Hertz’s waves.” He turned to Thomson. “As was reported in Annalen der Physik , last year.”
    Thomson smiled and bowed slightly to him.
    “That’s right,” I put in, because it was time to insinuate myself into the group. “Hertz was one of the early pioneers in wireless research.”
    Things were going better than I’d expected, a lot better. They obviously had some sort of advanced science to work with. I figured if they could manage to make great big ironclads fly like balloons, they knew something we didn’t. Now if I could get Tyndall and Thomson to kiss and make nice, I had three potential allies: the Irish owl, the Scottish bear, and, most importantly, the English lion Bonseller. I’d known men like him before—men who could open doors. Men who thought the world could be fixed and they were just the guys to do it. Dangerous men, but useful ones, too, up to a point.
    I heard a thud out in the hallway, where the Bobbies were waiting, and then what sounded like a scuffle.
    “What the devil’s going on out there, Gordon?” Colonel Rossbank demanded.
    “I’ll find out,