If the fighting came all the way down into Westwood, the Mendozas could escape back to the home timeline. A transposition chamber would whisk them away in nothing flat. The locals weren't so lucky. They were stuck here. They had to hope the struggle stayed far away. Liz hoped for the same thing. She didn't want anything bad to happen to the locals, and she really didn't want anything bad to happen to UCLA.

Dan watched a couple of officers load an impressive-looking piece of ordnance onto a horse's back. “Wow,” he said. “What's that?” The cartridges gleamed in the sunshine. Each one looked as big as his thumb. The weapon had to come from the Old Time. Nobody nowadays could make anything like that.

“Machine gun-.50-caliber,” one of them answered proudly. “We test-fired it, and it shoots great.”

“That is so cool!”' Dan said. “I didn't know anything like that was left in the armory.”

“It didn't come from the armory,” the captain said. “Scrounger found it in a house.”

“No kidding?” Dan said, and the officer nodded. Dan went on, “Ordinary people could have a piece like that in their houses? Wow! Old Time must've been something else.” That gun might beat the Westside all by itself now.

“Old Time was something else,” the other officer said.

“Oh, yes, sir.” Dan knew better than to show he disagreed with any officer, even when he did. But he didn't disagree with this one. “Ordinary people had guns like this, the way folks have belt knives now. Makes you wonder what all the kings- no, they called them presidents-had. though.”

“They had the Fire,” the first captain said grimly. “They had it, and they used it. And that's how come we don't have so much anymore.”

He was right about that. The Russians threw the Fire at America, and then the Americans threw it back.