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of speed which spoke of careful maintenance to the engine, whatever the condition of the chassis and hinges. Blundell negotiated afternoon rush-hour traffic with ease while the windscreen wipers played a slap-swash melody against the glass. As he made the turning onto the M9 Motorway northwest out of Edinburgh, Blundell said, "The site is well away from town, between Culross and Stirling proper, so make yourself comfortable."
    Stirling grimaced. "Right." He eased his leg into a new position.
    "There's coffee in the thermos, if you want it," he added, nodding toward a large canister between the seats, along with two plastic cups. "Might warm you up a bit, after that drenching rain."
    Given the lack of heat emanating from the Land Rover's vents—simple openings onto the engine block, not a proper heater at all—Stirling poured coffee and gulped it gratefully. Not as satisfying as tea, but warm and chock-full of caffeine, which he needed rather badly.
    "Were you posted to Belfast long?" Blundell asked at length.
    "Long enough. A year."
    "Not a good one, this last year. Bit of a mess."
    There wasn't much point in answering.
    Blundell glanced his way again "You've experience with the IRA, at least. We'll need that."
    Stirling studied Blundell's profile. Despite his apparent youthfulness, the skin around his eyes was taut and the muscles along his jaw had bunched into corded knots. "Trouble?"
    "Not yet. We're expecting it, though. Leastways, I am. Some of the others..." Blundell paused, reddening slightly. "You'll see when we arrive, I'm afraid. Security is a joke."
    Much like the project, Stirling thought uncharitably. Time travel... He'd be a laughingstock when word got round the regiment. He could hear it now: Have you heard about Stirling's latest conquest? Went haring off into the bloody Lowlands, chasing terrorists who've better sense than fall for a hare-brained scheme like time travel. Poor bugger, never was the same after Clonard...
    "I brought along employment dossiers," Blundell interrupted his glum maunderings. The project liaison was rummaging in a file box behind the thermos. "Thought you might like to get started," he added with an uncertain smile, "since it's a bit of a drive up and there's not much to see, with this rain."
    "Thanks." He hoped it hadn't come out quite as dryly as he feared.
    Blundell glanced rather sharply at him, then switched his attention back to the road, which flowed like a creek with runoff from the storm. "Don't mention it. I'll leave you to study our profiles, then."
    The chatty project liaison fell silent at last. Stirling opened the first file as the tires whined along the broad motorway, skirting the long reach of the Firth of Forth estuary. Paper rattled and crinkled as he read through the dossiers, the sound quiet against a backdrop of drumming rain and occasional rumbles of thunder. The staff were a mixed lot, which he already knew, of course, having read Ogilvie's files, but the employment dossiers gave him a different slant on the resident scientific team. At the very least, the files drew his attention away from the aches in wrist and knee.
    The first on his list was Terrance Beckett, project director and quantum physicist, with degrees from Oxford and an American university called MIT. His chief assistant, London-born Zenon Mylonas, obviously of Greek immigrant descent, had advanced degrees in quantum mechanics and theoretical mathematics. They jointly supervised the work of graduate student Fairfax Dempsey, another quantum physicist. All three men haled from England, with unimpeachable backgrounds, and all three had been with the project for more than a year. Irma Hubert, the only female mathematician among them, had joined the project six months previously, and Wilbur Rosswald, physicist, had come aboard five weeks ago.
    Cedric Banning, one of the six senior scientists, was involved with an unlikely field called psychoneuroimmunology, with a specialty in bioenergetic plasma