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"To put it simply, the anomaly of this earring being here twice might be something the Baldies can vector in on. We don't want to find out if your discovering that earring, and our bringing it here to its original self, has triggered some kind of detector; the sooner we go back to 1628 b.c. the better."
    "So who is going?" Ross asked, hands on his knees.
    Kelgarries said, "You, and our top two Greek Time Agents. Stavros Lemkis is down in the labs experimenting with some of the technology you brought back from your previous mission." He nodded at Ross. "Konstantin Skrumbos, our maritime expert on that time, is flying back from the Aegean right now, so he can join the briefing sessions."
    Eveleen felt a surge of excitement. Few women agents went into human prehistory because so few cultures had permitted women to move about. But the Minoans had been different.
    Milliard got to his feet. "Jonathan?"
    A youngish man stepped forward. He looked tired. Eveleen felt a surge of compassion; had he been up for days and nights? But tiredness wouldn't explain that painful quirk to his underlids, the lines beside his mouth. This man was deeply unhappy.
    "As yet," Jonathan said, "no one has established what language the people of Kalliste spoke. Linear B has proved to be an Ancient Greek form, but those tablets date from a later time. The few written artifacts from our time are written in hieroglyphs we call Linear A, which have recently been recorded. They, too, proved to be a kind of proto-Greek, but we have very few words in that language—not enough for your communication needs."
    He paused to look around. "There are many archaeologists who still feel that the Kallistans first came over from Anatolia, that they are Hittites or Luvians, or even Amorites, bringing the bull worship with them, though it developed into a much more peaceful form. We've put together a core vocabulary that might enable you to understand some words, or at least to begin to form a vocabulary. You will pose as traders, say from Egypt, and we'll give you some Ancient Egyptian language training as well as some Ancient Greek, since traders in that area did get all around the eastern Mediterranean."
    Milliard frowned. "The thing to keep in mind—never lose sight of—is the fact that in this situation, we know, or think we know, the year the volcano exploded, but we don't know the day. So we'll put you where we think you're safe, but you'll have to act fast. There's no time to be digging in and doing linguistic studies, no matter how tempting they might be." He cast a meaningful glance Ashe's way, but Eveleen wondered if the warning was actually for Mrs. Edel, who had been listening with intense focus.
    "Yes," Ross said, his wary expression back. "Fast. I like fast."
    "Marilyn can show you the sim on what happens when the volcano goes off, based on evidence from St. Pierre early in the twentieth century, and Krakatoa, and St. Helens. It's fairly grim," he said.
    No one spoke; Eveleen saw Linnea Edel looking down at tightly gripped hands.
    Kelgarries spoke up, looking tense and tired and very serious, "What we can be sure of is that nothing within a hundred miles of the blast—whatever day it occurred on—could have lived through it."

CHAPTER 4
     
    THE AEGEAN SKY was mild as milk, a pale, hazy blue with gauzy brush strokes of high cirrus that reminded Ross of southern California. The cargo vessel now plowing its way through the choppy seas could have been heading for Catalina Island. Strange, how you expect the cradle of civilization to be exotic, to strike the senses with profound or dramatic impact. Not like familiar territory.
    "Look there. Just off to the northwest," Gordon Ashe said, coming down one of the steel ladders and pointing off the starboard bow.
    Ross turned his attention briefly seaward. Just past a smaller craft, equally nondescript, he saw bumps on the horizon. He heard clunking and clanging on the steel ladder from the bridge. Down came Eveleen