Even the mice were impatient with him. Noxon wanted to yell at them all, mice and human and expendable: Don’t you see that I have no idea what I’m doing? I’m going to kill us all, or strand us in some impossible place and time, or even if I get us on the right timestream I’ll still fail at finding a way to save Garden. So what is your hurry?

Instead he closed his eyes. “Shut up, everybody, please.”

He had only sliced a moment or two when he realized that closing his eyes wasn’t going to help, considering that he had to see the expendable’s signal when he had reached a point before the ship was built.

The expendable’s arm was already up.

“You started time slicing with your eyes closed,” said the expendable, “and I was beginning to wonder if you left them that way.”

“Only for a moment,” said Noxon, “but that was too long. Sorry.”

“The ship’s computers have concluded that we are no longer bonded with the outbound ship,” said the expendable. “As far as we can tell, it doesn’t exist. The question is, did you bring us to a time before anyone was up here at L5 preparing to build it?”

“The only way to answer that,” said Noxon, “is to see if I can find the nub of somebody’s path.”

At first glance, Noxon thought he had gone too far—there was nobody up here in space. But maybe he had gotten them into that twenty-five-year gap in which Moon debris was wrecking everything everywhere. Maybe there was something big and rocky headed for them right now.

Then he found a few nubs. Not terribly close. But if he attached . . . if the ship came with him . . .

He gripped Ram Odin a little tighter. With the other hand he pressed against the instrument panel, as if this would help ensure that the ship came with him. “Hang on, mice,” he said. Then he attached to the nearest path.

He felt it, a great wrenching feeling. This was not the simple matter it had been when he first switched to this backward direction. It was as if he were walking through chest-high water. And why shouldn’t it feel that way? He had to drag the whole ship with him, change its moment, lever it back to its right place—all without a fulcrum, without any place to stand.

When he opened his eyes, the ship was still there. So were Ram and the expendable and he could feel the mice’s feet against his skin. They were not stranded in space. They had air.

Of course, they had had all those things before he tried to jump.

“Did anything happen?” he asked.