The Depths of Time by Roger MacBride Allen Page A

the Upholder. Koffield ordered all the subsystems for the link to the uptime relay checked and rechecked. Everything seemed to be working, and the relay itself reported in as healthy and as sending and receiving normal test pulses with the downtime relay. If the systems checks and telemetry were to be believed, then they had a solid comm link all the way through the wormhole, but no one had yet linked in to the other end.
    The detection section was not in good shape. The watch officers were still struggling to get the semitrained crew members, who had been drafted into the job, up to some sort of half-acceptable degree of competence. They were just about to the point where they could work a routine ship arrival without direct supervision, and that was all to the good. But by using untrained personnel, they were increasing the odds of missing the beacon on an incoming freighter. It certainly meant they would be more likely to miss any intruder or raider that was so inconsiderate as to fail to transmit a beacon signal.
    There were times when Koffield thought the waiting, the worrying, would drive him around the bend. And there were times, such as when the repair crews got the bridge ventilation system back up to spec, that he thought he could see an end in sight. When they got the main thermal systems back under control, so the officers ’ quarters cabin air temperature didnt suddenly spike fifteen degrees higher one hour and then crash down almost to freezing the next, he felt sure they had passed their low point. The worst was over. They were going to hold together until relieved. They were going to be all right. But then he received the chief engineer ’ s final report on the condition of the main propulsion system, and he knew their troubles were far from over.
    Koffield also knew that the main part of his job at this point was to stay out of the crew ’ s hair. Once he had made his decisions and given his orders, there was not a great deal of useful work that the captain could do. He was careful to make himself visible. He performed inspections, listened to his crew—but it was easy to overdo that sort of thing. He did not propose to breathe down their necks. He kept himself out of the way, and kept to himself. He did what he had always done when there was little to do but wait for a crisis to mature. He listened to his music, read his books, quietly, alone.
    Throughout Koffield ’ s career, it had seemed to him as if the crises always hit quite literally at the darkest hour, during ship ’ s night. As a general rule, things happened at 0200 hours, not 1000 or 1900 hours. They happened when Koffield was sound asleep, or about to sit down to a meal that had already been postponed three times. For once, all such rules were broken.
    It happened at 1107 hours, right in the middle of the dayside shift, with a well-fed and well-rested Captain Anton Koffield on the bridge and at the conn, and Lieutenant Jem Sentar, the ship ’ s best detection officer, on duty.
    “ Signal incoming through wormhole link! ” Sentar called out.
    Koffield was out of the command chair, on his feet, and standing over Sentar, right where he had been when a piece of shrapnel had killed Sayad. He half-consciously moved back a step, even as he stared intently at the repaired display screens. Sure enough, there it was. “ Identify, ” he ordered.
    “ Data packet from Chronologic Patrol vessel, ” Sentar reported.
    Koffield nodded in agreement. It wasn ’ t much, but there it was. A minimal arrival signal, a Chronologic Patrol identity pattern on blank signal packets. Aside from saying Here we are, they were sending null data, not even so much as the ship ’ s name attached. Clearly whoever was on the other end was under strict orders to keep intertemporal-information exchange to a minimum. There had been more than enough in the way of temporal violations already. But no matter how little the signal told them, it was enough, more than enough.