Chronospace Read Online Free PDF Page B

little too seriously for your own . . . our own good. Keep this up, and the next thing you know, you’ll be asking for a contract.”
    “I never said anything about a contract.” Although, in fact, the thought had crossed his mind more than a few times lately. Even a twelve-month MH-2, with a nonexclusionary clause, would do. “I just hate breaking up a good team.”
    She was about to say something when they were interrupted by a shrill electronic beep. They looked around to see a service bot moving down the corridor, the electrostatic brushes at the ends of its rotating arms sweeping dust from the cylindrical walls. “Move aside, please,” it droned as it approached. “Move aside, please.”
    Irritated, Franc resisted the urge to kick the bot out of the way. That would have been recorded by the bot’s camera, though, and then he would have received a warning from the station AI not to interfere with maintenance equipment. He reached up to grasp an overhead handrail, and swung his legs up to let the bot pass. “Thank you for your cooperation,” the bot said as it whirred beneath him; its brushes barely missed Lea, who had flattened herself against the wall. “Please do not block the corridor.”
    “That’s the whole point.” Lea looked up at Franc while he was still hovering above her. “We’re teammates. We’ve got to work together. Not only that, but we’re about to go on another expedition . . .”
    “You didn’t mind New York.”
    “That was different.” The first time they had slept together, it was while they were researching the causes of the Great Depression of the twentieth century. Three days after the crash of the New York Stock Exchange, it had been easy to get a suite at the Waldorf-Astoria; by then, they wanted some relief from the mass panic that had causedyoung millionaires to throw themselves through office windows. “That was a Class-3,” she added, speaking a little more softly now. “We’re about to do a Class-1. You know how dangerous that is.”
    Franc reluctantly nodded. Like it or not, he had to agree. Class-3 expeditions were relatively low-risk sorties so long as no one interfered with the turn of events. The stock-market crash of 1929 was one of these, as was the Challenger disaster of 1985. Class-2 expeditions were more difficult, since they required CRC researchers to be closer to hazardous situations: the Paris student riots of 1968 were an example, as was pre-Renaissance Europe during the Plague. Class-1 missions were those in which the lives of researchers were directly placed in jeopardy. During the entire existence of the Chronospace Research Centre, there had only been two previous Class-1 expeditions: the eruption of Mont Pelée on Martinique in 1902, and the Battle of Gettysburg in 1864. No one had been hurt during the 1902 expedition, mainly because the research team had vacated St. Pierre before the village was destroyed, but during the Gettysburg expedition a CRC historian posing as a contemporary newspaper reporter was shot and killed by a Confederate rifleman while attempting to document Pickett’s Charge. His colleagues had been forced to leave his body behind, after first removing his recording equipment. Fortunately, there had been no risk of causing a paradox; so many unidentified corpses had littered the Gettysburg battlefield, the addition of one more made no real difference.
    Since then, the Board of Review had been more careful in selecting potential missions. This wasn’t a difficult task; because of the inherent limitations posed by chronospace travel, many destinations were already out of the question. For reasons as yet unknown, it was impossible to travel farther back in time than approximately one thousand years. No one knew why, yet all previous attempts to open Morris-Thorne bridges that extended beyond the mid-1300s failed when the tunnels through the spacetime foam collapsed inupon themselves. Although there seemed to be no static