“London, England; September 20, 1875,” Sandoval responded.

Moosic frowned. Not only was this the first indication that one could travel in space while traveling in time; it was also a totally puzzling combination. Why there at that particular date?

The National Security Agency had the finest and most complex computers the world had known up to that time, and they came up with a lot of small things and even some major figures in and around that time and place, but nothing that would significantly alter the time-line, particularly when correlated with the known ideology and goals of the radicals. In fact, man and machine could find only one correlation that made any sense at all.

“On September 20, 1875,” the admiral told him, “Karl Marx arrived back at his home in London from a mineral bath treatment at Karlsbad. Unless they’re so convoluted we can’t follow their thought processes, it’s the only event on record that fits.”

“They want to consult with Marx?” Moosic responded, puzzled.

“We doubt it. The best idea we can come up with is that they want to give the time machine to Marx. We think that they’ve had no better luck than we on what could be changed to make their goals close. So, they have the machine and the means—why not give it to the man whose ideas they profess?”

The security man thought it over. In a way, it made a perverted kind of sense. Particularly if you were a committed radical getting more and more disgusted and disillusioned with the progress of your goals. In all but rhetoric, nationalism had triumphed over ideology long ago. The Russians always sounded like Communists but acted like Russians had always acted, as did the Chinese and others. The true believers had been systematically purged or assassinated, from Trotsky down to Maurice Bishop in Grenada—by the very states and systems they’d established.