"I'm sorry," said Spruance, "but that sounds utterly ridiculous. You're saying there's a place where, for instance, America lost the War of Independence, or the South won the Civil War?"

"And infinite variations on that." She nodded. "A universe where there was no War of Independence because British colonial policy was more enlightened. An American Civil War after which Lincoln wasn't assassinated. A Second World War in which Hitler was. Or where the whole planet was invaded by, I don't know, space lizards or something. A universe in which Coke tastes like Pepsi. And another in which I'm standing over there drinking tea, rather than here drinking this… uhm… coffee. You get the picture?"

"If that's so," mused Spruance, "it might seem as if you've dropped into your past, but in truth you haven't."

"Quite so." Halabi nodded, encouraged by the man's grasp of the theory. "This may be a subtly different nineteen forty-two. Or maybe a radically different one. Perhaps Hitler doesn't make the mistake of invading the Soviet Union…"

"He has," Beanland put in.

"Oh. Well, that's good then. But you're right, Admiral. Maybe things are slightly different here. Maybe nothing we'll ever notice, like the typeface of a small county newspaper being altered, but everything else appears exactly the same. Or maybe our trip here was a straight H. G. Wells deal. From twenty twenty-one to our very own nineteen forty-two. I don't know. We may never know. Theories are one thing, but actually cracking open the fabric of spacetime and manipulating it without dire consequences, well, that's a whole other sort of something."

"As you may have discovered to our cost," said Spruance.

"Yes," Halabi admitted. "I am sorry. You were unfortunate enough to tangle with our CIs while there was minimal human oversight."

"CIs?"

"Combat Intelligences. Computers. Machines that think. They help us run our ships, our whole society actually. And when they detected the threat you posed to the task force with your cannon fire, they responded."

"Well, that response may have cost us the war," Spruance observed bitterly.

"It won't," Halabi insisted. "The strategic imbalance between the Axis powers and the Allies is so great that it would take a lot more than the destruction of your task force and the loss of Midway, Hawaii, or even Australia to tip that balance in their favor."

"Oh, God, don't let MacArthur hear that," Spruance muttered, practically to himself.

"With all due respect," Beanland protested, "you've done your damnedest to help them on their way."

"I am well aware of what happened tonight, Commander. I lost a good many friends myself on the Fearless. We haven't had a chance to formally discuss it at a command level yet. But I can assure you we won't leave you swinging. If necessary, almost any one of the ships in our task force could sink the Japanese carriers and capital ships closing on Midway at the moment."

"Yes, but would they?" Spruance asked. "Do you seriously believe your Japanese comrades would happily send their forefathers to the bottom?"

She answered honestly. "I don't know. I haven't spoken to them. And since most of the Siranui's senior officers have been killed anyway, their views are no longer entirely relevant."

"Yeah, but the views of the survivors will be!" Beanland insisted. "Maybe you got yourself some real tame, friendly Japs where you come from, but we got just about the worst bunch of bastards in the world right here. And I don't fancy them getting their hands on any of those rockets or thinking machines you hammered us with.

"Admiral," he said, ignoring Halabi now, "whatever turns out to be the case with these people"-he indicated the British captain with a jerk of his thumb-"we have to insist on those Japs that came along with them being disarmed and interned. They're just too much of a threat."

"That may well be, Lieutenant," Spruance said, nodding, "but let's just stay calm for the moment, shall we. Captain Halabi, how do you think your boss would take to that suggestion?"

"Frankly, not very well. I don't think any of us would."

Spruance seemed quite taken aback by the defiant note in the woman's voice.

"And why not, might I ask?"

"Because they're our allies," she said, as though explaining something to a child. "This wouldn't have been the Siranui's first tour with Admiral Kolhammer's group… sorry, that means nothing to you. Look, I've served in coalition with that ship before. I know that Admiral Kolhammer has, too. They've taken the same risks we have, watched our backs, taken fire when we did. We have no reason to doubt to their loyalty or their honor."

"Yes, but their loyalty and honor might just demand that they lay in a course for the homeland. I take it from the title of this book that Japan didn't have a good time of it, by the end of the war."

"No, granted, they didn't. But the Siranui's crew aren't stupid. They know that what doomed Japan was the hubris of the militarists who ran the country…"

"Who run the country, you mean," said Spruance.

"Okay," she conceded. "Who run the country. But Japan-their Japan-has been a liberal democracy for generations. To suggest that modern Japanese would want to return to the mistakes of their distant past is as fatuous as saying modern Germans would all turn back into Nazis if given the chance."

"Oh my God," Beanland pleaded. "Please don't tell me you've got a bunch of German ships out there, as well."

Spruance was genuinely perturbed by the possibility. "Well, Captain," he demanded. "What of it? Any other nasty little surprises you'd care to let us in on. A U-boat, for instance?"

Halabi struggled to control her exasperation with the paranoid mind-set of the two men.

"No," she said firmly. "We have no German vessels operating with us. There are undoubtedly a small number of German personnel on secondment to various elements of the task force. There may well be some Italians, too. I know of a couple on the Fearless. And we had a couple of Republic of Indonesian boats with us, which might well have complicated things, since you don't have a Republic of Indonesia… but then neither do we nowadays, so I guess it couldn't be any more complicated. And anyway, they seemed to have escaped the Transition here, like the American subs and a New Zealand frigate, which were all some distance away from the event."

"So what on earth do you intend to do with all of these Krauts and Japs, then?" asked Spruance, who seemed to be growing agitated again. He stood and turned to face her squarely.

"I don't intend to do anything with them," she replied, "until we've had a chance to discuss the matter at a fleetwide command level. A discussion, I can assure you, that will take into account the wishes of all of the men and women concerned."

"Good Lord," Spruance cried. "You can't suggest that you would let them be repatriated to their respective countries, if that's what they desired."

"Of course not," she responded. "Nobody's going to hand Hitler or Tojo the plans to an atom bomb. But they're not going into irons, either, just for being Japanese or German. I have a Russian on my own ship, by the way. I know she'd have no interest whatsoever in returning home. Stalin would have her shot on sight, as soon as he discovered what became of his bloody workers' paradise."

Spruance slowly began pacing a tight circle around the cabin, rubbing the back of his neck as he turned the whole thing over in his mind. He was surprised to discover that his initial shock and disbelief were fading quickly now. Piled on top of that discovery came the realization that this annoying woman was mostly responsible. Standing there in her dress uniform, arms folded as arrogantly as you please, tossing off her own opinions while disregarding his as though she considered them largely worthless, she came as a small, intimate herald of change. What sort of a woman was she? The loss of her sister ship and a thousand comrades appeared not to ruffle her at all. She seemed every bit as self-assured of her own godhead as any number of Royal Navy captains he'd met over the years. It was almost as if their blasted empire had never begun to crumble to dust. The jaw-dropping perversity of meeting this odd creature who was so very obviously convinced of her own infallibility, in that recognizably and infuriatingly British way, all helped undermine the skepticism with which he had first responded to Kolhammer's ridiculous story.