It was.

“Then we need to make a plan,” said Param. “Rigg as Captain Toad and Umbo as Rebel King sound fine. But that’s only the start of it. Did anybody think to bring Olivenko? It’s time for whatever military wisdom he’s acquired.”

Chapter 18: Hiding from the Future

CHAPTER 18

Hiding from the Future

Noxon was not as relieved as he should have been. The first stage of his quest had been a complete success. He had managed to get the starship—and therefore Ram Odin and the mice and all the sleeping colonists—back into the normal stream of time, moving from past into future.

Yet now, orbiting Earth, Noxon realized that this had been a mere mechanical hurdle. The real purpose of his journey still lay ahead of him. He had to get into position and observe the return of the Visitors from Garden, so he could find out why Earth then sent the Destroyers to wipe out all life on Garden. What difference would it make that he had flipped the timeflow of a lost starship, if he failed to save Garden?

“It’s not easy to figure out exactly when it is on Earth right now,” said Ram Odin. “We’re before any kind of electronic signals, so we can’t mine a datastream and get time and date.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t bring us back to a pre-measured time,” said Noxon, “but I was jumping blind.”

“Nobody’s criticizing you,” said Ram Odin.

“We are,” said a mouse very near to Noxon’s ear. Maybe it was joking.

But no. The mice clinging to his body clamored, and the facemask sorted out the voices.

“Why waste time figuring out when we are right now?”

“We can’t stay in this time, whenever it is.”

“We’re a new star and somebody’s going to notice.”

“Just because they don’t have spaceships doesn’t mean they don’t see us.”

“Where are you going to hide the ship? That’s the question!”

Noxon had to silence them just to hear himself think. “Wait, stop,” he said.

“Talking to the mice?” asked Ram Odin.

The expendable explained. “The mice are very excitable.”

“They have a valid point,” said Noxon. “It doesn’t matter what time we’re in right now. What matters is that we need to figure out how we’re going to hide this ship and then get to the future and figure out why the human race decided to destroy Garden.”

“Hide the ship?” Ram Odin said. “If they don’t have telescopes . . .”

“We have to leave the ship somewhere while we travel into the future,” said Noxon. “We can’t leave it in orbit.”

“Agreed,” said the expendable. “Even if we station ourselves in geosynchronous orbit over the Pacific, we become a fixed star to the Polynesians. And once the Europeans get there, we are the most intensely studied object in the sky.”

“Once humans get space travel,” said Ram Odin, “this ship is the first thing they’ll visit, long before they have the technology to build anything like it. Leaving the ship in space will change everything.”