Ensign Curtis had a new job. No longer just the assistant bookkeeper on the Enterprise, he and Lieutenant Commander Black had been assigned to the Clinton to undergo "familiarization," learning the basics of operating with the Multinational Force. Having done so, they would train their colleagues on the Enterprise. The idea of Wally Curtis having anything to teach some of those old salts back on the Big E was enough to keep him awake at night. They were going to eat him alive. He was just sure of it.

But then, Admiral Spruance had personally told him that his quick thinking at Midway had singled him out as a young man who could adapt to change under pressure, and that was something they were all going to have to work on. And he did have Commander Black along to look after him.

Curtis had nearly choked on his pride when he wrote to his mom and dad to tell them. Of course, he couldn't send the letter yet. The censors weren't letting anything out about the arrival of the Multinational Force. They were the talk of Hawaii. Every bar, every shop, every warehouse and factory, every home and office was abuzz with excited-and occasionally hysterical-talk, rumor, and argument about the people from the future. But not a single story had been printed in the local press. It was an invisible sensation. And Curtis was right in the middle of it.

Who would have thought?

He spent most of his time here, in the Media Center-except that it wasn't called that anymore. The journalists had mostly been confined to their quarters. It was the Research Center now, and Ensign Wally Curtis was one of the first researchers. He was currently learning about helicopters.

It was a dream posting, like being sent on a spaceship, only better. Buck Rogers didn't have a fraction of the stuff these guys used all the time.

Unfortunately Curtis wasn't allowed to use the computers without supervision, not yet, and Lieutenant Thieu was nowhere to be found, so he occupied his time reading conventional books and journals. Some of it was great, but some…

"Would you like to have a go on my computer, Ensign Curtis?" Rosanna Natoli asked.

She'd appeared from nowhere.

Curtis was used to that. The reporter and her friend, Miss Duffy, were frequent visitors to the Research Center. Unlike some of the other journalists, they'd agreed to help out. They told him they were writing a paper to explain the Transition.

Here and there around the room other sailors and one or two civilians sat quietly at workstations, tapping keys, scribbling notes. Curtis would have liked to ask them for some help, but truth be known, he was a little frightened of approaching them. They all seemed sort of fierce to him. Even more so than the old salts.

"I'd love a turn on your computer, Miss Natoli!" he said with real relief.

"C'mon then, Ensign. Let's take her out for a spin."

Curtis fairly leapt out of his chair to follow Rosanna over to her workstation. As they went, she handed him her personal flexipad.

"The big computer is more powerful, but of course I can't carry it around with me," she said. "When I insert the flexipad into the drive slot, however, this baby reformats itself into my personal workstation. So now I've got the nice big screen, the keyboard, and faster access to the Net. Or I would have, if we still had the Net. We're making do with whatever the Clinton had cached. Still with me?"

"Not really," Wally said, pulling up a chair.

"Don't sweat it. You're a smart kid. You'll pick it up quickly. Where'd you say you were from? Chicago, right? Okay. Type that in."

Wally was actually quite an accomplished typist. He'd taken lessons at his mother's insistence. But the combination of the very busy screen in front of him, and the strangely shaped keyboard beneath his wrists, proved so unsettling that he retreated into a slow, two-fingered, hunt-and-peck style.

"Jesus, kid, you're gonna have to speed it up if you want a job at the Trib. Okay, click the mouse… this thing here."

The picture on the big screen changed instantly. While Wally squinted at the flood of information, Natoli explained that Fleetnet had more than four thousand CNN references to Chicago stored in its lattice memory. Beginning to get the picture, Curtis stared in awe.

"All right," Natoli said. "A big cheer for the Windy City. Now, let's refine the search. Whereabouts you from in Chicago?"

While Rosanna played nursemaid to the ensign, at the other end of the room Julia Duffy was just beginning to feel the need for another chill pill. She'd been chewing through her supply of Prozac like fucking M amp;M's, ever since they'd arrived. As she listened to Lieutenant Commander Black describe the raid on Pearl Harbor, she began to feel again as if the floor of the world was dropping out from beneath her feet. Like, here's this guy, completely sane, kinda cute even, and he's talking about something happened way back in the last century-as though it was just yesterday, she mused, hoping it didn't show on her face.

"You all right, Miss Duffy?" Black asked.

Julia placed her coffee cup on the table and saw that her hand was shaking.

She didn't know whether it had been such a good idea after all, agreeing to help Kolhammer out by writing this layman's account of the Transition. The more she looked into it, the more obvious it became that they were trapped here. Without the Nagoya, which everyone agreed had been destroyed, they were fucked. You just don't build a time machine out of box tops and vacuum tubes, which was roughly the level of technology available in forties America.

Then again, she didn't feel like being confined to quarters like the other reporters-about half of them-who hadn't signed up for the program.

"I'm sorry," she said. "It just hits me sometimes. That we're really here. Our whole world has gone."

Dan Black cracked his knuckles, a sound like small rocks breaking. He could see that the reporter was growing gloomy. He didn't know what to say, but felt as if he had to try to cheer her up.

Truth to tell, he liked her. She was odd but intriguing. And pretty as all get-out, of course. She was interested in him, as well. He knew that much. Black had been with a few women in his time, but it had never worked out for the long run. He wasn't sure why, but he had a feeling, half formed and little understood, that he lost interest in them when they began to lose themselves in the courtship. He shook his head. That sounded screwy. He went back to copping a look at the reporter's legs. She'd caught him once, but didn't seem to mind.

"Anyhow," he said, "Ensign Curtis doesn't think it works that way."

"What way?"

"That your coming here affects what happens in your own time. It's still there, where you left it. He's been reading things on those computers, reckons you might have made a whole new world of time by coming here, or something like that. I don't know. I'm just a copper miner, and lady, I'm all at sea."

She brightened a little at the weak joke.

"I think you've got more to you than that, Dan. You're not just the sum of what you've done, you know. There's what you can be, as well. That's just as important."

"Guess I won't argue with that," he said, taking a pull at his cold coffee. "Fact is, I haven't worked a mine in nearly twelve years. The Depression killed my daddy's business. Damn near killed him, too. I had to hit the road, look for work. My parents, they couldn't afford to have me in the house. I eat too much."

"But you still call yourself a copper miner, even though you've been in the navy how long?"

"Eight years," he confessed. "I only got in because of my pilot's training. I did some crop dusting in 'thirty-one. Then that dried up. I scratched around, did some roadwork under the Roosevelt program. That dried up, too. I was picking fruit in California when I heard the navy was looking for fliers. Seemed kind of screwy but I was getting real tired of eating figs three times a day."