The small room was much busier now, with nearly two dozen Indonesian sailors revived and attending to those comrades who were still unconscious, or cleaning up the unpleasant aftermath of their illness. The Japanese and Indonesian sailors remained wary of one another, but their officers had turned to the task of coping with the unprecedented situation.

Lieutenant Ali Moertopo was trying hard to keep relations with the Japanese as friendly as possible. The bulk of his countrymen, including his own captain, were still unconscious and showing little sign of responding to stimulants, so he was well aware that the initiative lay with Kakuta. If circumstances had been more conducive, they might have just sunk the Japanese fleet and sailed off to Pearl Harbor, there to offer their services to the eventual winners of this war.

Assuming, of course, that this insanity played out, and they actually had traveled back in time.

He found he still couldn’t accept that as a real possibility.

For the moment, though, he was content to present a mask of civility and cooperation to his captors, for that’s what they were, no matter how much buffalo shit they fed him about “rescue” parties. He’d gotten a good long look at the mouth of Hidaka’s pistol when he came to, and he remembered only too well that conceited sneer. He noted that the Japanese sailors—or perhaps they were marines—hadn’t put down their arms.

Moertopo had offered Kakuta the chance to observe his fleet on the Sutanto’s radar only because he needed to know what sort of enemy he was up against. There appeared to be four capital ships, probably consisting of two carriers and two cruisers—or maybe battleships—and another group of smaller escorts, probably destroyers and maybe a tender. He would endeavor to interest them in a lengthy demonstration of the mast-mounted cameras, and in doing so confirm that conclusion. Captain Djuanda would need every possible scrap of information when he recovered and took command.

If he recovered.

Moertopo willed the captain to revive, so that he might be relieved of the mind-bending responsibilities presented by this situation.

“. . . Lieutenant, are you ill again? You look quite distressed.”

The Sutanto’s exec pulled out of his reverie with a shake of his head. In fact, he still felt awful, and the physical effects of their arrival were compounded by the stress of confronting the impossible.

“I am sorry, Commander,” he lied. “I was overcome by this sickness again. It’s much worse than any nausea I have felt before, even in heavy weather.”

“Perhaps you have other treatments for it?” Hidaka suggested. “Medicines as powerful as your machines?”

His captor was playing with him, he knew. Fishing for more information about their technology. Moertopo was convinced that if he didn’t handle this exactly right, neither he nor any of his men would live to see the next dawn.