The first on his list was Terrance Beckett, project director and quantum physicist, with degrees from Oxford and an American university called MIT. His chief assistant, London-born Zenon Mylonas, obviously of Greek immigrant descent, had advanced degrees in quantum mechanics and theoretical mathematics. They jointly supervised the work of graduate student Fairfax Dempsey, another quantum physicist. All three men haled from England, with unimpeachable backgrounds, and all three had been with the project for more than a year. Irma Hubert, the only female mathematician among them, had joined the project six months previously, and Wilbur Rosswald, physicist, had come aboard five weeks ago.

Cedric Banning, one of the six senior scientists, was involved with an unlikely field called psychoneuroimmunology, with a specialty in bioenergetic plasma fields, whatever those were. He, too, supervised a graduate student, a fairly recent addition to the staff. Jill Dearborne had been recruited by Terrance Beckett himself, three weeks previously. Banning had been with the project for two months, replacing a plasma-field specialist killed in a motor crack-up, victim of a blinding rainstorm and wet pavements. Banning hailed from Australia originally, but had been raised in Manchester, according to his security clearance paperwork.

Marc Blundell, intent on his driving and fumbling tobacco into his pipe, might not look the part, but evidently was a quantum mechanics genius, thus proving that appearances had very little in common with talent. He was the official project liaison with the Home Secretary's Office, as well, which suggested shortcomings in Terrance Beckett's personality. Indrani Bhaskar, Whitechapel native, had won a scholarship to Oxford, where she had distinguished herself to the point of winning a professorship of history early in her career. Clayton Crandall and Amber Darnell served Bhaskar as assistant historians.