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blocks, chains, and lifting tackle hung from the roof above.
At the rear of the building, they left the space housing the machine and went
through a door in another partition to find themselves in a suddenly more
domestic and homey setting of closets and easy chairs, a table with cards
scattered on top, the smell of cooking wafting from not far away, books,
magazines, a coffeepot in one corner, and a radio turned low. Two more men
were waiting here, and Winslade introduced them as Captain Payne and Sergeant
Lamson, both, like
Major Warren, from the Army. The group comprised a dozen persons, all told,
Winslade said, but the others were elsewhere at that moment.
"So who are we, and what do we want?" Winslade swung around to face Teller and
Wigner squarely. "We can help with many of the problems that you are involved
with currently. For example, you, Eugene, are working with Leo, trying to
answer a lot of questions concerning neutron moderators. Graphite seems
suitable, but you need to know the path-length for slowing fission neutrons
down to the right energy for capture." He looked at Teller. "But for an
explosive device, will concentrated U-235 chain-react with fast neutrons? If
so, what critical mass would be required, and how rapidly would it have to be
assembled? I could go on."
Teller looked thunderstruck. "Now, just a minute," he whispered in a horrified
voice. "How do you know what problems we are working on? This is a -- a highly
sensitive area. I..." He shook his head and looked at Wigner. "I don't
understand. What's going on?"
"I don't know, Edward." Wigner was looking just as lost. He turned back toward
Winslade.
"Who are you? What department of the government are you from?" he demanded.
Szilard had been bottling up his emotions for as long as he was able. "That's
a time machine out there!" he shouted, hopping from one foot to another and
jabbing his finger in the direction they had come from. "They're not from
anywhere in this world at all. They've come back from the future -- back from
1975!"
Teller looked at Wigner, Wigner looked at Teller. They both looked at Szilard,
then at
Winslade, and finally back at each other. "He's gone mad," Teller said in a
flat voice. But at the same time there was a curious undertone hinting that he
already half believed it. The look in
Wigner's eyes said the same thing.
Winslade nodded. "Yes, we are from the future," he said. "Therefore,
naturally, we know something of your work. But we have our problems, too. The
machine out there is called a returngate. Its function is to establish a
return connection to our own time, via which information and objects may be
transmitted. It has been constructed to specification and operates correctly
according to all our test procedures, but we are unable to make contact with
the 1975
end. The situation is especially strange because we appeared to have made
contact successfully with this end before we left." Winslade spread his hands
and shrugged. "We want to know what's gone wrong."
CHAPTER 17
THE VAST MILITARY BUREAUCRACY that directed and administered the German war
machine was centralized in a group of massive, imposing buildings lying along
Bendlerstrasse, in Berlin. On a corner of Bendlerstrasse and a stone quay
fronting the Landwehr Canal, the Ministry of Defense stood behind a
classically columned faIade approached by broad stone steps. Farther along the
street lay the Headquarters of the Army General Staff, its gray fieldstone
complex stretching back almost as far as the landscaped meadows and lakes of
the Tiergarten. Numbers 72 -- 76 of what was called Tirpitz Ufer, a roadway by
one of the side canals, belonged to the austere, five-storey
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ration.txt granite edifice that was headquarters of the Abwehr, the German
military intelligence service.
In an office situated at a corner of the building on the third floor, two
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