The radicals below were no stooges of Russia; they were true believers. Not only their statements but also their intelligence files and psychological profiles proved it.

Ron Moosic sighed. “All right, I’ll buy it. I assume this has already gone to the President and the NSC. What do they say?”

“Our computer models indicate no particular danger. They’re not going to meet the man they imagine, but rather a nineteenth-century philosopher very much a product of his times. Still, there’s a risk. There’s always a risk. Joe Riggs tells me that they’ve bypassed virtually all of the systems at this point. One of his teams has managed to tap into the system and reduce the available power to the time chamber itself. Still, we’ll have a two-hundred-year range to deal with if they really have some other date in mind. If they know this much, they might know how to bypass and go remote on the suits.”

“Bypass?”

“It was built in as a safety factor after we lost that fellow back in the Middle Ages. If you know you’re going, you can boost yourself out of there into one other time frame without severing the automatic connection. It’ll save your ass until the automatics on this end can bring you back. They’ll have a second chance once they’re where they say they want to be, although travel in space will be severely restricted.”

“Then we can’t afford to let them go. Simple as that.”

“Maybe not. We’ve proposed to let them go, all right, but doing a little funny business ourselves. The time-space coordinates change every moment, and they’re continually updated. That update is partially through a satellite link with the Naval Observatory. We have proposed, and they have tentatively agreed to, a little alteration. Instead of getting the atomic clock, they’ll be plugged into one of our computers. Let’s send them back to September 10, 1875— ten days early. The suits will have a low charge, and won’t be able to boost immediately. That’ll give us a week or more to get back there and track them down, as well as work on this end to trace their accomplices. We think it’s worth the risk.”