V
The tall man frowned. He flicked switches on the hexagonal console, glancing up at a video screen which showed only static.
"What are you trying to do now?" the young woman next to him asked, a hint of exasperation in her tone. Her attractive features were Indian, but she spoke with an English accent. "Tuning in to Ally Pally?"
"No, no, no," the man replied, his long brown hair flapping around his face as he whirled to look at her, his piercing blue eyes somber. "Tuning in to the news."
"The news, did you say? How boring." Another man, shorter and more raffish-looking, entered the cavernous room, rubbing sleep from his eyes. "Why can't we watch Daniel Craig in Silverball?"
"Silverball? Is that a Bond film? I don't remember Daniel Craig playing Bond," the woman said.
"He hasn't yet in your time," the tall man said absently, still flicking switches. "But I'm looking for something more tragic."
"More tragic than his Bond fandom?" the woman muttered. "That'll be difficult."
"Aha!" the tall man cried, finding the frequency he wanted. The screen flickered into life, the letters "CNN" appearing at the bottom. He spun around again to face her.
"You've been traveling with us for a couple of years now, relatively speaking," he said. "In our travels, have you heard anything about the major news stories on Earth in the two years after you left?"
The young woman frowned.
"Well, I've heard about 9/11, of course," she said. "That was such a major historical event that there was no avoiding it, like Pearl Harbor or the Paris Rock. And I know enough by now about the perils of changing history not to try to prevent it – if you ever manage to get me home," she added, glancing dubiously at the console.
"Quite, quite," the tall man muttered. "I thought I would show you something else, something you may have missed."
On the screen, a group of bright, burning objects streaked through a daytime sky. A commentator spoke somberly in an American accent.
"What is that?" she asked. "A meteor shower?"
"Only really big meteors are visible in daylight," the other man commented.
"They're not meteors," the tall man said. "That is the wreckage of the space shuttle Columbia, which disintegrated on reentry, killing all seven astronauts."
His two companions fell silent. The image on the screen changed to a group of seven photographs of smiling men and women.
"When did this happen?" the woman asked.
"February 1, 2003."
"That's seventeen months after 9/11," she said, her stock-trader's mind quickly calculating. "Was this an act of terrorism, then?"
"No, although that was the first thought of many people," the tall man said. "One of the astronauts – what was his name? Ilan? Yes, Ilan Ramon – was from Israel, so the people of that era were afraid the shuttle had been sabotaged or shot down by radical Islamic terrorists."
The scene on the scanner had shifted again to show a mission control center. Scores of men and women were sat at computer consoles, presumably working out what had happened to Columbia.
She frowned. Although she had grown used to travel through the space/time vortex, the thought of conventional space travel still made her uncomfortable. It reminded her of the tragic circumstances under which her own travels had begun.
"An American space shuttle?" the other man asked. He was – literally – a fugitive from the 1960's, and so the space shuttle was ahead of his time, but he had apparently heard of it in his travels. "Didn't those start flying in the early 80's, and finish around 2010?"
"Yes, there were five of them in all," the tall man said. "Challenger exploded during liftoff in 1986, and Columbia was destroyed in 2003. The others were called Discovery, Endeavour and Atlantis."
She noticed that he looked even more somber than she would have expected, as though he also was being reminded of a bad memory – perhaps one more specifically connected with the space shuttle fleet? But the lecture continued.
"Columbia was doomed not by terrorism, but by a piece of foam insulation that fell off the big external fuel tank during launch. It pierced the tiles of the orbiter's heat shield, allowing hot gases to penetrate the shuttle during reentry."
The television image had changed back to the pictures of the seven astronauts. The other man stared at them, stroking his stubbly chin.
"That Indian woman is good-looking," he said. "Wasn't there a beautiful female astronaut killed on the Challenger, too?"
She glared at him, not sure whether to be embarrassed, offended or darkly amused.
"You're probably thinking of Judy Resnik – a deft hand with a manipulator arm if ever I saw one," the tall man said reflectively.
"You met her?" the other man asked.
"Oh, very briefly. It was one of my more forgettable adventures, otherwise I wouldn't remember it. For some reason I was having a long discussion about space with my companions, almost as though we were quizzing each other, and –"
"Hang on a minute," the other man interrupted. "I understand about not preventing 9/11, because that had major historical consequences. But why shouldn't we prevent this? How much impact on the history of space travel can the loss of one shuttle have?"
"You'd be surprised," the tall man said reflectively. "Keith Robbins, the first man to set foot on Venus, went to Rick D. Husband High School, named for the commander of Columbia. Would he have made the choices he did without the example of a fallen hero?"
There was a strange flicker in his eyes as he said this, almost as though he might be making it up to put them off. If so, she wasn't surprised. She knew his passion for preserving the timelines. At times he acted like he was the only person left in the cosmos attempting to do so. And perhaps he was.
She knew for herself that if she ever got home to 2001 it would be difficult to resist sending anonymous e-mails to NASA, or even to the Columbia astronauts, warning them of the danger of falling foam. She would feel guilty about not doing it. But after seeing the dangers of changing history, she would feel even more guilty about doing it.
Anyone who tried to prevent a tragedy might cause a greater one. That was why most people were lucky in not knowing the future. But she no longer had that luxury. And she knew that one of her friends had borne the burden of knowledge far longer than he himself could remember.
She would someday return home a changed woman, she knew. And she sometimes wondered if her two companions could ever go home.
The three travelers stood side by side, gazing at the continuing reports on the scanner screen.
VI
Ozma gazed out at her people from the balcony of the palace.
A large crowd had gathered in the last hour. She had ordered the Guardian of the Gate and the Soldier with the Green Whiskers to walk up and down the streets of the city, announcing that Princess Ozma had an important address to make. The people knew from the expressions on the faces of the Soldier and the Guardian that the news was sad. The citizens of the Emerald City were usually happier than the people of any other city on Earth, but this crowd was silent and solemn, gazing up expectantly at their girl Ruler.
Ozma was a fairy princess with wondrous powers of magic, and she had long ruled the world's greatest fairyland with wisdom, love and courage. But time could not touch her, as it did not touch her people, and she was still a little girl. Her lip trembled. For a moment she could not think of what to say. Then she spoke, calmly and clearly. She did not raise her voice, and yet she could be heard by all.
"People of Oz," she said. "I believe you have guessed that I have sad news for you today, but it is not as sad as the news I gave you seventeen months ago. My news is of the deaths of seven people – not all of them Americans, but all close to the hearts of the people of the United States, our sister nation in the Great Outside World.
"Today the space shuttle Columbia, the flagship of NASA's fleet, broke apart on reentry into the Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard."
A visible and audible wave of sadness passed through the crowd.
"These seven brave human beings were Rick D. Husband, the shuttle commander; William C. McCool, the pilot; Michael P. Anderson, the payload commander; the three mission specialists, David M. Brown, Kalpana "K.C." Chawla, and Laurel B. Clark; and Ilan Ramon, the payload specialist and the first person from Israel to fly in space."
For half an hour Ozma spoke, telling her people something about the background of each astronaut, the experiments they had performed in space, and the possible causes of the disaster. She emphasized that it did not appear to be the result of terrorism. Finally she said:
"I know that you are as sad as I am today. The crew of Columbia will be remembered always, not only by their families, friends and colleagues, not only by the people of the United States, but by people far away in other realms of magic and imagination, people some may believe do not exist. We, the people of Oz, will remember Columbia. And as there is no death in Oz, so, too, the memory of Columbia and her crew will never die."
A hush fell. The people of the Emerald City stood before her, reluctant to return to their homes. Slowly, very slowly, a few people on the edges of the crowd began to leave.
Ozma looked up. The sun shone brightly in the flawless sky of Oz, and its rays were reflected by the ten thousand emeralds of the city to an almost blinding brilliance. But beyond the scattered light of the sun, beyond the thin envelope of air that girdled the world, Ozma's fairy vision could see the ancient stars shining in beauty and in peace.
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters who appear in this story. The Oz books by L. Frank Baum are in the public domain. Mickey and Minnie Mouse are trademarks of the Walt Disney Company. Peanuts is copyright United Feature Syndicate, Inc. Superman and Wonder Woman are trademarks of DC Comics. The Eighth Doctor Who and his companions Fitz and Anji appear in Doctor Who novels published by BBC Books.
