V

"Oh, Darwin!" said Bernard Baal, once we were all back in the Yucatan room and standing around the professor's body again.

            "Yes. You can say that again," said Zeus.

            "I cannot believe this. How the hax did it even happen?" said Baldr.

            "I think the physical and mechanical aspects of it are pretty obvious even to them layman, Alan," said Dr. Julian Ra.

            "I know that! I meant where were the rest of you?" said Baldr. "Did no one even hear him cry out?"

            "No. I already asked," said Mirabi, standing up. She had been crouching by the body, using her wristcom to run a full scan of the knife. "And he may not have had time. It would have been very quick," she added to Megan Uzume, who nodded sadly. Her eyes were still teary. "The murder weapon's clean."

            "Really?" said Ishtar. "It doesn't look very..."

            "She means there's no evidence on it, Max," said Isabel Chernobog.

            "Correct," said Mirabi. "Whoever it was was smart enough to douse it with brandy straight afterwards. That's what the dark stain on his jacket is. A good way to kill any DNA."

            "Fingerprints?" I said. They were an ancient means of identification, but they had served us well in the past.

            "Some, but they're all too smudged," said Mirabi. "We'll never get any matches."

            "Ah," said Ra. "I'm afraid that might be my fault. I did touch it. I was going to pull it out before... before I realised he was gone."

            "Oh, brilliant, Julian. Good going," said Baldr.

            "I was rather shaken. I defy you to do better in the same situation," said Ra.

            "Gentlemen, please," said Zeus, stepping between them. "We've got more important things to worry about right now. Like who's going to take over all his classes for a start."

            "David!"

            "I still want to know how this happened," said Baldr. He turned to Anubis. "Exactly what have you and those swashbuckling ruffians you call a security team got to say for yourselves, Captain? You're meant to be here to protect us. How does some complete stranger march in here and..."

            "We were hired to act as a rescue team on your backsteps, Doctor," said Anubis, folding his arms. "No one mentioned that intruders in the present were a possibility."

            "Obviously! Because it should have gone without saying," said Baldr.

            "Well, if it hadn't, I would have taken steps," said Anubis. "Put some security measures in place..."

            "Yes. You can't sue us," said Alex Bast.

            "What makes you think it was a complete stranger?" I said.

            "What? Who else could it have been?" said Baldr, looking at me. He looked around at the others. "What possible reason could any of us have for wanting Henry dead?"

            "Well, he did knock you out of the running for the Wells Prize last year," said Zeus.

            "That is not...!"

            "All right," I said, holding up my hand. "What about the weapon. I take it none of you recognise it?"

            "I'm afraid not, Detective," said Domingo Xibalba. While the rest of us had taken off our tunics when we'd returned, he hadn't bothered to change and was still in his loincloth and headdress, which was rustling whenever he moved. "I have never seen one like that before. Here or in Tutal Xiu. It certainly was made by my people, but I've never laid my eyes on it before now."

            "Me neither," said Bernard Baal and Baldr shook his head.

            "So there's no chance you brought it through time with you?" said Mirabi.

            "Definitely not," said Ra. "We bring very little back apart from computer data. We have no way of knowing which artefacts are going to be historically important. Removing them from the time stream could cause all sorts of problems."

            "The rule is absolutely no scavenging or souvenir hunting," said Baldr.

            Once again, I reflected for a second how nice it was to see a time travel project that was being run by someone sensible. Mirabi and I had once chased down a time-active jewel thief who had made off with an English royal crown that was due to be used in the coronation of Elizabeth I. We had gotten it back to where it belonged before it was missed, but if we hadn't, the consequences for the past and the present could have been dire. However, it was a problem we dealt with more and more often. Time travel was fashionable and people liked to have tangible souvenirs from their trips that they could show off at dinner parties to friends too poor to afford visits to the past themselves. There were safe ways of doing it; such as approaching local artists and getting them to make brand new pieces for you – a dozen "new" Leonardo Da Vinci portraits turned up this way every year – but there was still a thriving black market for time-smuggled artefacts. Providing it was from the past, who cared if you'd collected it yourself or not?

            "We run careful checks and we normally bodyscan everyone as soon as they come back," said Anubis, looking at the teaching assistants. "Just in case anyone decides to pocket a memento."

            "It's still an invasion of privacy," said Isabel Chernobog. "And if you think we're going to put up with cavity searches, you're mistaken."

            "All right. If it's not from the past, is there anywhere else it could have come from?" I said. "Does anyone have a private collection of artefacts?"

            "No, but...," said Max Ishtar. "Could it be something Doctor Hades dug up?"

            There was a pause. The academics, the students and the guards all looked at each other.

            "That is possible," said Zeus.

            "Who exactly is Hades?" said Mirabi.

            "Dr. Anthony Hades. He's the head of the archaeology department here at the School of History," said Ra. "He's conducting a dig at Tutal Xiu right now. I mean, here in the present, down on Earth. He's excavating the ruins of the city in Yucatan."

            "We've been consulting with him," said Zeus. "He's been able to fill in some of the gaps in Domingo's knowledge."

            "They are not 'gaps'," said Domingo Xibalba. "They are spaces waiting to be filled."

            "Interesting. Where is he right now?" said Mirabi.

            "Uh... 2.30pm? Probably down on Earth," said Zeus, looking at his watchcom.

            "Great. Lead the way," said Mirabi. "Erik?"

            "Yes, go ahead," I said. It was her turn now, even if my head wasn't feeling any clearer.

_          _          _          _          _

Timothy Sobek, a hard-eyed, slightly scarred and gum chewing obvious combat veteran from Anubis's team, volunteered to escort Mirabi down to Earth. I'd pulled Zeus back from accompanying her as I wanted the chance to question all the academics – who would obviously have been Professor Wei'To's closest colleagues – separately and together.

            "No," said Ra, shaking his head. "He didn't have any enemies at all to the best of my knowledge. He's always been a popular man."

            "No. Just rivals for the Wells prize," said Zeus. "But I can't imagine any of them actually wanting to kill him for it. Not even Clifton in temporal engineering would go that far."

            "You mentioned that before. What is the Wells prize?" I said.

            "What?" said Zeus. "You seriously don't know? You're ChronOps."

            "Humour me," I said. One of the downsides to being in ChronOps was that everyone assumed you knew everything there was to know about time travel; forgetting just how vast and complicated a field it was. As the Time Traveller's Ball – and now the Library Project – had proved to us, there was often more going on in the civilian time travel community than we could easily keep up with.

            "It's the H.G. Wells Prize for Time Travel Applications," said Baldr. "It's the Solar Systems highest academic award for using time travel to improve the sciences or expand human knowledge. Henry's won it three times. The latest was for the Library Project."

            "It can't be for that anyway. He wasn't entering this year," said Zeus. "The Project's been taking up too much of all our time. I've had to cancel all the shows I was meant to be shooting in the last six months. And Henry hasn't done anything new... Oh, Gentle Darwin."

            "What?" I said.

            "As last year's winner, he's meant to present the prize this year," said Zeus. "That's another thing we're going to have to sort out. Dax, this is inconvenient."

            "I'm sure Henry would apologise if he could," said Ra.

            "But he's right, sir," said Bernard Baal, shaking his head. "How are you going to choose who gets the doctoral place now?"

            "This is hardly the time, Bernard," said Baldr.

            "The doctoral place?" I said. The professor might be dead, but there was no shortage of absent-minded PhDs around. I dreaded to think how much relevant information they might genuinely be forgetting to share with me.

            "There's one opening for a doctoral student with the Library Project this year," said Isabel Chernobog. I was starting to notice that she had a well-developed talent for being close by and listening without you noticing her. "We're all applying for it."

            "Professor Wei'To was going to read our thesis proposals and pick one of us in a few days," said Max Ishtar. "I was so hopeful."

            "You haven't even submitted yours yet," said Chernobog.

            "How do you know?" said Ishtar, looking at her.

            "We'll sort something out. Don't worry," said Ra. "We'll also inform the Wells judges and work out a new roster for his classes..."

            It was clearly going to be impossible to keep them focused if I questioned them as a group, so I left them discussing this and moved across the room to where Captain Anubis was frowning at a boardcom. One thing I had learned through many investigations was that security guards, who naturally blended into the background, had a unique view of the big picture and very often saw stuff that no one else did. But for the same reason, they were often slow to slow to share it.

            "Detective," said Anubis, without looking up. He tapped two more buttons on the boardcom's touch screen.

            "Captain," I said.

            "I imagine it feels like too many suspects and too little evidence so far," he said.

            "Well, one solid piece," I said. "The murder weapon's always a good start. I've been wondering. If no one brought it back from the past officially..."

            "...What about unofficially?" finished Anubis. "Have any of them been using the teleporter behind my and my team's backs?"

            "I'm not trying to imply anything," I said.

            "Don't worry. I was wondering the same thing," said Anubis. He shrugged and gestured with his chin at Alex Bast who was standing guard by the time teleporter doors. "Bast does have a point. Letting one of our principles get fatally stabbed is not going to look good on the company netsite. Even with all our success stories. Adonis. Pluto. Uranus. Mercury. Callisto."

            "Callisto?" I said, raising one eyebrow.

            "What is that ancient Earth proverb?" said Anubis. ""Ask no questions and you'll be told no lies." That's the one."

            "I see," I said. Of all the moons of Jupiter, Callisto was not politically important, but it was the cultural capital of the Jupiter Imperia. and it was not a place where Free Martians were welcome. If Anubis actually had run operations – which could only be secret and illegal ones – inside the J.I., it meant, if nothing else, that Terra Cimmeria's personnel genuinely were good at their jobs.

            "Anyway, I was thinking the same thing," said Anubis. "Has anyone been sneaking access to the teleporter?"

            He turned the boardcom around where I could see it. A spreadsheet-style log showed all the uses of the time teleporter, including dates, times, destinations and trip duration spread out over the past several months.

            "But the answer's no," he said. "Everything verified. We have a thumbprint sign-in and sign-out system for using the teleporter and three people have to access it at once to unlock the system. It's impossible for one person to do it by themselves and, as far as I can tell, no one has even tried..."

            He broke off as the boardcom's screen turned red. Data scrolled across several windows and warning messages flashed up.

            "Oh, Shav," said Anubis.

            "What's wrong?" I said. Ra and the other academics came over to us, followed by the teaching assistants. Anubis rapidly typed on the screen.

            "What is it, Captain?" I said, trying to look at the screen and do a quick headcount at the same time to see if anyone was missing.

            "Someone's slipped the system. They've activated the temporal field," said Anubis.

            "Stand to! Teleporter room," shouted Catherine Sobek. She and all the other Free Martian guards started to move, shouldering their rifles.

            "Belay that! They're not in the teleporter room!" said Anubis, his fingers dancing on the boardcom. "The temporal field generator's been activated, but the teleporter hasn't. They're... Oh, the clever son of a Venusian."

            "What is it?" I said.

            "It's not the time teleporter," said Anubis, staring at the screen. "They're upstairs. They've linked the temporal field generator to the university's teleport system. That's how they're doing it. It only showed up because I'm running a system diagnostic."

            "Who is it?" said Isabel Chernobog, looking around.

            As soon she said it, I realised who was missing. Max Ishtar must have slipped out of the room while all our backs were turned.

            "Second floor! Move!" shouted Catherine Sobek.

            "No! Stay here!" I said, waving them back. "Keep the crime scene secure!"

_          _          _          _          _

Loath as I was to leave the crime scene unattended with Mirabi gone, I raced alone up the stairs to the second floor. I should not have been trusting Anubis and his team to guard the evidence or the suspects – largely because they were suspects themselves – but for the same reason, I couldn't risk taking them with me for the small chance that they might be in on this with Ishtar. If they were, I didn't want to have to deal with both him and six fully trained professionals at the same time.

            My boots pounded up the stairs, along the landing and around the corner to the teleporter pads. Ishtar was standing with his back to me, hastily programming the teleporter with his own boardcom, which was humming as the pads warmed up.

            "Ishtar!" I yelled.

            "Aaah!"

            He jumped and spun around just as I reached him and his foot collided with my legs. My balance went and I grabbed his shirt to keep from falling. Unfortunately, he was off balance too and we both fell straight onto the teleporter pads. The boardcom bounced out of his hand and my elbow scraped over the controls. The teleporter – illegally linked to the temporal-field generator downstairs – hummed and white light surrounded us as we were transported to wherever Ishtar had set the co-ordinates for.

_          _          _          _          _

I managed to get a tight grip on Ishtar by his throat and held him there as we re-materialised on the floor in the same position. As soon as the white light cleared, I rolled over, still holding him down, and drawing my Unigun and aiming it at arm's length at whatever was waiting for us.

            It turned out to be an Oxbridge Luna corridor. It looked identical to the one we had just left. I blinked and realised it was the one we had just left, down to all the details of the tall windows looking out of the moon, the supply cupboard doors and the fire extinguisher. My Helmcom flashed up a message on my visor screen as it wormlinked with the nearest ChronOps satellite, giving me an exact time. 21st of July 3008. 6.00pm. We were still in the same place; just four hours into the future.

            "Oh, Darwin," said Ishtar, underneath me, looking at the boardcom. "This isn't right."

            The corridor was empty. I holstered my Unigun and quickly stood up, hauling Ishtar to his feet.

            "I can explain, Detective!" he said.

            "You had haxing well better," I said. "But first, you're taking us straight back to the present. Do not try anything clever."

            "Don't worry. I didn't mean to come here," said Ishtar. I relaxed my grip on him slightly so he could reset the controls. "This is too early. I needed to go forward four days... Oh, there it is. That's why. You startled me just when I putting the destination in. I got the decimal point in the wrong place..."

            "Just get on with it," I said. "Reset it and take us back right..."

            I broke off as I heard voices from downstairs. Ishtar heard them too and opened his mouth and I clamped my hand over it. Trips to the future were always risky, especially when you didn't have any clear ideas of what you were going to find when you got there; which was basically all the time. It was always best to be invisible and that meant we had to avoid running into anyone else if we could possibly avoid it. I held Ishtar as still as possible as the voices got close enough to hear clearly.

            "Please tell me you know the combination?"

            "Of course. The professor told me. In case I