"Long enough. A year."

"Not a good one, this last year. Bit of a mess."

There wasn't much point in answering.

Blundell glanced his way again "You've experience with the IRA, at least. We'll need that."

Stirling studied Blundell's profile. Despite his apparent youthfulness, the skin around his eyes was taut and the muscles along his jaw had bunched into corded knots. "Trouble?"

"Not yet. We're expecting it, though. Leastways, I am. Some of the others..." Blundell paused, reddening slightly. "You'll see when we arrive, I'm afraid. Security is a joke."

Much like the project, Stirling thought uncharitably. Time travel... He'd be a laughingstock when word got round the regiment. He could hear it now: Have you heard about Stirling's latest conquest? Went haring off into the bloody Lowlands, chasing terrorists who've better sense than fall for a hare-brained scheme like time travel. Poor bugger, never was the same after Clonard...

"I brought along employment dossiers," Blundell interrupted his glum maunderings. The project liaison was rummaging in a file box behind the thermos. "Thought you might like to get started," he added with an uncertain smile, "since it's a bit of a drive up and there's not much to see, with this rain."

"Thanks." He hoped it hadn't come out quite as dryly as he feared.

Blundell glanced rather sharply at him, then switched his attention back to the road, which flowed like a creek with runoff from the storm. "Don't mention it. I'll leave you to study our profiles, then."

The chatty project liaison fell silent at last. Stirling opened the first file as the tires whined along the broad motorway, skirting the long reach of the Firth of Forth estuary. Paper rattled and crinkled as he read through the dossiers, the sound quiet against a backdrop of drumming rain and occasional rumbles of thunder. The staff were a mixed lot, which he already knew, of course, having read Ogilvie's files, but the employment dossiers gave him a different slant on the resident scientific team. At the very least, the files drew his attention away from the aches in wrist and knee.