He got up and stretched. The ceiling of the chamber was only a few centimeters above his head. Tall in his own timeline, he would seem taller in the alternate. The locals weren't as well nourished as people back home. I'd make the basketball team here, he thought. I'd play center, too.

Somebody had scribbled something on the wall by the door. He leaned closer to get a better look. THE ONE AND ONLY HOMEMADE TIME MACHINE, it said. He grinned. That hadn't been there the last time he came to Agrippan Rome. Odds were it wouldn't be there when the chamber came back for his family. The company usually made that kind of stuff disappear in a hurry.

“Here you go.” The operator opened the door, the way a steward would on a shuttlecraft. The air they'd brought with them from the home timeline mingled with what the locals breathed. That was cool and damp. The transposition chamber had materialized in a cave two or three kilometers from Polisso. The cave overlooked the road to the west. That road never had a whole lot of traffic. When video cameras in the cave showed it was clear in both directions, people could go down and head for town with the locals none the wiser.

Dad was the first one out the door. “Time to make the best deals we can,” he said in neoLatin. He used English as little as he could while they were in the alternate. So did everybody else. What people in Polisso didn't hear, they couldn't wonder about.

Jeremy and Amanda followed their father around to the cargo compartment. The first things Dad got out were two swords in leather sheaths. He gave Jeremy one and buckled the other one on himself. No one here traveled cross-country unarmed. Then he pulled out four packs full of trade goods. Everybody in the family got one of those.

“A good thing bandits don't know we're coming, or we'd really have things to worry about,” Mom said as she slung her pack on her back.

“Need more than swords to keep off bandits,” Dad agreed.