“It’s not far.” He was already out and offering an impatient hand. “A few hundred meters.”

She kept her hand at her side as she stared at his watch. It was sending out a low, regular beep. “Why is it doing that?”

“It’s scanning. It only has a range of ten kilometers, but it’s fairly accurate.” Holding his wrist out, he moved in a slow circle. “Since I doubt there’s anything metallic as big as my ship around here, I’d say we’ve found it.”

“Don’t start that again.” Libby pushed her hands into her pockets and started to walk.

“You’re supposed to be a scientist,” Cal reminded her as he fell into step beside her.

“I am a scientist,” she muttered, “which is why I know that men do not bounce off black holes and drop into the Klamath Mountains on the way back from Mars.”

He slung a friendly arm around her shoulders. “You’re looking behind you, Libby, not ahead. You’ve never seen anyone who lived two centuries ago, but you know they existed. Why is it so difficult to believe that they exist two centuries in the future?”

“I hope they will, but I don’t expect to offer them coffee.” He wasn’t crazy, she decided, but he was clever. “You told me you’d tell me the truth—all of the truth—when we found your plane. I’m holding you to that.” She tossed up her head, then froze. “Oh, my God.”

Less than twenty feet ahead she saw a gap in the trees, the break she had spotted from beneath the ridge. Up close it looked as though a huge sickle had sliced through the forest, hewing down a swath of evergreen and undergrowth more than thirty feet wide.

“But there was no fire.” She had to quicken her pace to keep up with Cal. “What could have done all this?”

“That.” When they reached the break, Cal pointed. There, nestling on the rocky, needle-strewn ground, was his ship. Trees, some of them thirty feet high, lay like pickup sticks around it. “Don’t go any closer until I check for radiation,” Cal warned, but he needn’t have bothered. Libby couldn’t have moved if she’d wanted to.

Using his wrist unit, he checked the level and gave a quick nod. “It’s well within normal limits. The time warp must have neutralized any excess.” He slipped an arm around her shoulders again. “Come on inside. I’ll show you my etchings.”

Dazed, silent, she went with him. It was huge, as big as a house, and like no plane she had ever seen. A military secret, she told herself. That was why Cal had been so evasive. But surely one man couldn’t fly something so large.