Disclaimers and Notes for Quantum Backstep
Disclaimer: Seven Days and everybody therein belongs to Crowe Entertainment and Paramount. Quantum Leap and everybody therein belongs to Don Bellisario, Bellisarius Productions, NBC, and MCA/Universal.
No copyright infringement is intended by their use. I own the story only, not the characters.
Cast of Characters by Original Show
7 DAYS
John Ballard
Isaac Mentnor
Frank Parker
Nathan Ramsey
Bradley Talmadge
Olga Vukovitch
"Salt and Pepper" of the Delta Team
QUANTUM LEAP
Sam Beckett
Verbena Beeks
Albert Calavicci
Donna Elesee Beckett
SammiJo Fuller
Irving "Gooshie" Gershowitz
Christina Martinez-O'Farrell
Ziggy
Music credits as found in the ASCAP (ACE on the Web) search engine.
http://www.ascap.com/ace/ACE.html
SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES
Writers Otto Harbach
Jerome Kern
Publishers Universal Music Publishing Group
Music credits as found in the BMI HyperRepertoire Search Engine.
http://repertoire.bmi.com/index.asp
BABY LET'S PLAY HOUSE
Writers ARTHUR GUNTER
Publishers EMBASSY MUSIC CORPORATION
STOP IN THE NAME OF LOVE
Writers LAMONT HERBERT DOZIER
BRIAN HOLLAND
EDDIE HOLLAND
Publishers STONE AGATE MUSIC
CRAZY
Writers WILLIE NELSON
Publishers SONY/ATV SONGS LLC
OPERATOR
Writers WILLIAM SPIVERY
Publishers CONRAD MUSIC
IT'S HARD TO BE HUMBLE
Writers MAC DAVIS
Publishers SONGPAINTER MUSIC
PEGGY SUE
Writers BUDDY HOLLY
JERRY ALLISON
NORMAN PETTY
Publishers WREN MUSIC CO INC
ROCK THE REDHEAD
Writers CHRIS RUPPENTHAL
RAY BUNCH
MIKE POST
Publishers SONGS OF UNIVERSAL INC
RESPECT
Writers OTIS REDDING
Publishers IRVING MUSIC INC
GOD ONLY KNOWS
Writers BRIAN WILSON
TONY ASHER
Publishers IRVING MUSIC
Special thanks go to:
Kathy and David for allowing me to bounce ideas off them.
Yulia Zaks for the Russian translations.
Hannah and Steven for "leaving Mommy alone" so I could work on this.
AJ Burfield for being my very patient Beta reader.
And to Irwin, who went to bed alone for many nights while I was with Sam and Frank.
**********************
PROLOGUE
You're about to be let in on the most highly classified data America holds. We have a device that will allow us to send one human being back in time seven days.
Never Neverland, Nevada
Friday, February 11, 2000
"Come on buddy, up and at 'em," Craig Donovan shook Frank Parker by the shoulder. "We're on full alert, intel should be rolling in 5 minutes."
"What happened? Did some bomb go off somewhere?" yawned Parker covering his eyes to the harsh light shining off of the bare white military walls of his quarters in Never Neverland.
Donovan's eyes lit up in surprise. "How do you always know what's going on?" he asked his friend.
"I was kidding," groaned Parker. "Did something really go boom?"
"Talmadge called for everyone in the briefing room in 5 minutes. Get some pants on, Frank," was Donovan's only reply.
After the briefing was over, Parker sat at his computer reviewing the schematics of the sphere. Backstepping was hard enough but landing the sphere right where he took off from was going to be tricky. He'd only done it once before, a backstep he'd rather forget. The NSA was cutting this one close. Two days were already past since the explosion. The next day, when the time to leave came, he was suited up, data wafer in place and sealed into his time sphere.
"Reactor at 90 percent, all systems ready," the lightly accented voice of Olga Vukovitch came over the intercom in Frank's helmet.
"Not all systems, Olga. I didn't get my good luck kiss," Frank pouted teasingly.
"Reactor at 95 percent, control to manual. That's what you get for mutilating wonderful music," she replied. "Reactor at 100 percent, good luck, Mr. Parker. Engage!"
The kick of the time sphere beginning its ascent into space always exhilarated and nauseated Frank Parker simultaneously. He watched the days count back: Saturday, Friday, Thursday, Wednesday, Tuesday, Monday, Sunday. As the sphere began its decent, Frank felt a strange sensation on his skin like static electricity mixed with someone walking over his grave. He pushed it aside and concentrated on controlling the entry point for the sphere. The feeling grew. 'I'm definitely going to have to talk to Ballard about this.' Frank thought as he was engulfed in a blue light.
*********************
Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Accelerator and vanished. He awoke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al, an observer from his own time who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home.
Sam Beckett had gotten accustomed to finding himself in strange surroundings but nothing prepared him for finding himself at the controls of a space ship. His body ached, blood mixed with sweat was dripping from his face and he had a pounding headache. The engine of the vehicle turned off automatically and Sam began looking for the exit. Suddenly the hexagonal hatch opened and a woman began to speak to him.
"Are you all right, Mr. Parker?" The words were English, but the accent was Russian. Had Sam leaped in during the cold war again, he wondered.
"Here, let me help you out of that." the woman continued as she unbuckled the safety straps that were holding Sam in the seat.
"I'll be fine in a minute," Sam said. Then he passed out cold.
CHAPTER 1
Sunday, February 6, 2000
Never Neverland
"Frank? Frank?"
Sam heard a voice calling as he came back to consciousness. A black man in army fatigues was standing over him looking very worried.
"Man, Frank, you scared me for a bit there," Craig Donovan said as he helped Sam sit up. He was laying in a hospital bed with cardiac electrodes attached to his chest and a pounding headache.
"Oh, I'm OK," Sam responded, "Thanks, aahh...Donovan." Sam read the name off the fatigue shirt and hoped it was right.
Donovan smiled, "What the hell were you doing, ruining my weekend? You owe me a beer, buddy."
"Sure thing," Sam said. Just once he would like to not feel clueless at the start of a leap.
"Not so fast. After four hours unconscious, Mr. Parker has at least one more physical before I release him," said the Russian accented woman. She was about 5'7" and had auburn hair, alabaster skin and flashing green eyes.
"Ah, come on, Olga, have a heart." Donovan teased. She frowned at him.
"O.K. O.K.," he relented-- hands up in surrender. "Frank, I leave you to Dr. Vukovitch's tender mercies," Donovan said as he walked out of the door.
"Now that you are awake, Mr. Parker, let's have a more complete exam," Dr. Olga Vukovitch said as she snapped on latex gloves.
All Sam could think was 'Oh, Boy!'
*******************
Stallion's Gate, New Mexico
"Now this just isn't fair," Admiral Albert Calavicci was fuming. "I have a guest passed out cold in the waiting room, the imaging chamber is off line and Ziggy won't talk to me!"
"Oh, I'll talk to you, Admiral," the rich alto of Quantum Leap's Artificial Intelligence (Ziggy's) voice echoed in the control room, "I just don't have anything to tell you."
"Where's Sam?" demanded Al.
"I regret to inform you," Ziggy began, "that Dr. Beckett's whereabouts are currently unknown."
"I need a drink," Al groaned.
**********************
"I need a drink," groaned Frank Parker as he sat himself up. He was staring at four sterile white walls in a room with no discernable door. The only furniture in the room was the hospital-like gurney he sat on. This had been Frank's second thought on returning to consciousness. The first was that the aliens had reclaimed their sphere and taken him prisoner. His flight suit was missing, replaced with a white body suit and the bar-coded tattoo on his arm was gone.
**************************
Neverland
Having been determined to be "relatively undamaged" by Dr. Vukovitch, Sam was released from the infirmary and escorted to his quarters with the orders to get some rest "while Talmadge and Ramsey look over the data wafer". 'Whatever that means,' Sam thought. The pounding in his head had dulled a bit and he needed a shower.
As he helped himself to some clothes, he caught sight of himself in a mirror. A handsome man in his early thirties with dark brown hair and eyes looked back at him. "Hello, Frank Parker." He waved to the reflection and noticed the bar-coded tattoo on his forearm.
Now dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, Sam sat down at Frank's computer and began to learn all he could about Frank Parker. "It's February 6th," Sam noted by looking at the clock on the computer screen, "Two Thousand!" Sam's heart jumped in his chest. "I've leaped into the future!"
Sam was still in front of the computer an hour or so later when Donovan knocked on his door.
"What happened in the other timeline?" Donovan asked.
Sam just looked at him, puzzled.
"I guess I'm about to find out," Donovan shrugged. "Talmadge wants everyone in the briefing room ASAP."
"Coming," Sam said as he followed Donovan out the door.
In the briefing room, Sam began forming theories about where and who he was. He knew his name was Frank Parker and that the others around the table were co-workers of his in some military instillation called Never Neverland. The pretty Russian was Olga Vukovitch, some kind of doctor. The soldier, Donovan, called the G-man type in the cheap suit Ramsey and the balding bespectacled man in the wheelchair with the lollipop he called Ballard. A rather formal looking middle-aged man with a beard had called the briefing to order. Sam assumed him to be Talmadge, the one who had called the meeting.
"Let's get up to speed on this folks," Talmadge called for the briefing to begin.
"Shouldn't we wait for Dr. Mentnor?" Olga questioned. The name 'Mentnor' got Sam's attention.
"Isaac reviewed the data wafer as he downloaded it. He's checking with his contacts about some scenarios," Talmadge informed them. A hole in Sam's Swiss-cheesed brain began to twitch at him. "Frank?"
"Umm, what? Oh, sorry... I was...er..." Sam stalled and prayed for Al to appear in the Imaging Room and give him some information.
Olga chimed in, "What did the data wafer have on it?"
'Thank you Olga,' Sam thought.
Bradley Talmadge brought up the projection screen and began storytelling. "According to the data collected in the other timeline"
'Timeline?' Sam pondered.
"In five days a government installation at Stallion's Gate, New Mexico will explode, killing 287 people...."
Sam became aware of a heavy pain in his chest and suddenly felt nauseated.
"... of the joint congressional finance committee." Talmadge was continuing, "The project instillation"
"Quantum Leap" Sam supplied, accidentally aloud.
"Yes, Quantum Leap," Talmadge confirmed. "It appears that someone set a bomb off inside the facility."
Sam sat transfixed by the image on the projection screen of Stallion's Gate, his home for so many years, its top blown off-- looking like a smoking volcano. The photographs of four well-dressed people replaced the image.
"This is Senator Helene Mercer-Fuld, Congressmen Angelo Martinelli, Benjamin Fisher and Garrett Ho." Talmadge supplied, pointing to each picture in turn.
"The committee members?" Donovan questioned.
Bradley nodded and went on. The image changed yet again to a middle-aged Naval officer in uniform. "This is" Bradley began.
"Al" Sam interrupts softly.
All eyes in the room turn to him. "Admiral Albert Calavicci, the administrative head of Project Quantum Leap," Sam expanded; his eyes bright with unshed tears.
"And the only way we have of getting in, in order to stop this from happening," Bradley continued, "This is not just about the people in Stallion's Gate. The power source of the facility is nuclear and when it blew last time..."
"The radiation took out most of the southern United States and northern Mexico," Sam finished Talmadge's thought.
"Yes," Bradley retook the floor. "Now, as a military officer, despite his current assignment, Calavicci can be ordered to fall under our jurisdiction for National Security. I'd like to get our people into the security force over there, tighten it up. Nate," he turned to Ramsey, "I need fifty of your best."
"Got it," Ramsey said.
"That's not the way in," an elderly voice said from the doorway. Isaac Mentnor entered the room looking grim. Sam looked at him with Frank Parker's eyes. Isaac had aged well in the twenty years since he had been Sam Beckett's physics professor at M.I.T. He had been fascinated by Sam's time travel theory.
"...icci is eccentric but runs a tight unit. He won't take kindly to commando tactics at his base." Isaac was saying. "I've just been on the phone with a former student of mine who works at Quantum Leap. I've got an invitation. I'll take Craig and Frank with me. Between the three of us we can do the reconnaissance."
Bradley chewed this over for a moment before agreeing.
"While you do that," Talmadge continued, "Nate and I will get a command base set up at Socorro. It's not enough to stop this bombing, people, we also need to catch the bomber."
"It's about 400 miles to Socorro," noted Nate Ramsey.
"Which is why we need to begin moving out as quickly as we can," finished Bradley.
"I don't think Mr. Parker is up to an eight hour car trip," piped up Olga.
"You are still looking a bit pale, Frank." Ballard added.
Sam began to protest when Craig came to his rescue.
"Why don't I bring Isaac and Frank by helicopter?" he offered. "It'll take about 3 hours in the air."
Bradley considered this for a moment and then agreed.
"We'll leave in the morning," said Isaac.
****** Continued in Chapter 2 ***********
Disclaimer: Seven Days and everybody therein belongs to Crowe Entertainment and Paramount. Quantum Leap and everybody therein belongs to Don Bellisario, Bellisarius Productions, NBC, and MCA/Universal.
No copyright infringement is intended by their use. I own the story only, not the characters.
Cast of Characters by Original Show
7 DAYS
John Ballard
Isaac Mentnor
Frank Parker
Nathan Ramsey
Bradley Talmadge
Olga Vukovitch
"Salt and Pepper" of the Delta Team
QUANTUM LEAP
Sam Beckett
Verbena Beeks
Albert Calavicci
Donna Elesee Beckett
SammiJo Fuller
Irving "Gooshie" Gershowitz
Christina Martinez-O'Farrell
Ziggy
Music credits as found in the ASCAP (ACE on the Web) search engine.
http://www.ascap.com/ace/ACE.html
SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES
Writers Otto Harbach
Jerome Kern
Publishers Universal Music Publishing Group
Music credits as found in the BMI HyperRepertoire Search Engine.
http://repertoire.bmi.com/index.asp
BABY LET'S PLAY HOUSE
Writers ARTHUR GUNTER
Publishers EMBASSY MUSIC CORPORATION
STOP IN THE NAME OF LOVE
Writers LAMONT HERBERT DOZIER
BRIAN HOLLAND
EDDIE HOLLAND
Publishers STONE AGATE MUSIC
CRAZY
Writers WILLIE NELSON
Publishers SONY/ATV SONGS LLC
OPERATOR
Writers WILLIAM SPIVERY
Publishers CONRAD MUSIC
IT'S HARD TO BE HUMBLE
Writers MAC DAVIS
Publishers SONGPAINTER MUSIC
PEGGY SUE
Writers BUDDY HOLLY
JERRY ALLISON
NORMAN PETTY
Publishers WREN MUSIC CO INC
ROCK THE REDHEAD
Writers CHRIS RUPPENTHAL
RAY BUNCH
MIKE POST
Publishers SONGS OF UNIVERSAL INC
RESPECT
Writers OTIS REDDING
Publishers IRVING MUSIC INC
GOD ONLY KNOWS
Writers BRIAN WILSON
TONY ASHER
Publishers IRVING MUSIC
Special thanks go to:
Kathy and David for allowing me to bounce ideas off them.
Yulia Zaks for the Russian translations.
Hannah and Steven for "leaving Mommy alone" so I could work on this.
AJ Burfield for being my very patient Beta reader.
And to Irwin, who went to bed alone for many nights while I was with Sam and Frank.
**********************
PROLOGUE
You're about to be let in on the most highly classified data America holds. We have a device that will allow us to send one human being back in time seven days.
Never Neverland, Nevada
Friday, February 11, 2000
"Come on buddy, up and at 'em," Craig Donovan shook Frank Parker by the shoulder. "We're on full alert, intel should be rolling in 5 minutes."
"What happened? Did some bomb go off somewhere?" yawned Parker covering his eyes to the harsh light shining off of the bare white military walls of his quarters in Never Neverland.
Donovan's eyes lit up in surprise. "How do you always know what's going on?" he asked his friend.
"I was kidding," groaned Parker. "Did something really go boom?"
"Talmadge called for everyone in the briefing room in 5 minutes. Get some pants on, Frank," was Donovan's only reply.
After the briefing was over, Parker sat at his computer reviewing the schematics of the sphere. Backstepping was hard enough but landing the sphere right where he took off from was going to be tricky. He'd only done it once before, a backstep he'd rather forget. The NSA was cutting this one close. Two days were already past since the explosion. The next day, when the time to leave came, he was suited up, data wafer in place and sealed into his time sphere.
"Reactor at 90 percent, all systems ready," the lightly accented voice of Olga Vukovitch came over the intercom in Frank's helmet.
"Not all systems, Olga. I didn't get my good luck kiss," Frank pouted teasingly.
"Reactor at 95 percent, control to manual. That's what you get for mutilating wonderful music," she replied. "Reactor at 100 percent, good luck, Mr. Parker. Engage!"
The kick of the time sphere beginning its ascent into space always exhilarated and nauseated Frank Parker simultaneously. He watched the days count back: Saturday, Friday, Thursday, Wednesday, Tuesday, Monday, Sunday. As the sphere began its decent, Frank felt a strange sensation on his skin like static electricity mixed with someone walking over his grave. He pushed it aside and concentrated on controlling the entry point for the sphere. The feeling grew. 'I'm definitely going to have to talk to Ballard about this.' Frank thought as he was engulfed in a blue light.
*********************
Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Accelerator and vanished. He awoke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al, an observer from his own time who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home.
Sam Beckett had gotten accustomed to finding himself in strange surroundings but nothing prepared him for finding himself at the controls of a space ship. His body ached, blood mixed with sweat was dripping from his face and he had a pounding headache. The engine of the vehicle turned off automatically and Sam began looking for the exit. Suddenly the hexagonal hatch opened and a woman began to speak to him.
"Are you all right, Mr. Parker?" The words were English, but the accent was Russian. Had Sam leaped in during the cold war again, he wondered.
"Here, let me help you out of that." the woman continued as she unbuckled the safety straps that were holding Sam in the seat.
"I'll be fine in a minute," Sam said. Then he passed out cold.
CHAPTER 1
Sunday, February 6, 2000
Never Neverland
"Frank? Frank?"
Sam heard a voice calling as he came back to consciousness. A black man in army fatigues was standing over him looking very worried.
"Man, Frank, you scared me for a bit there," Craig Donovan said as he helped Sam sit up. He was laying in a hospital bed with cardiac electrodes attached to his chest and a pounding headache.
"Oh, I'm OK," Sam responded, "Thanks, aahh...Donovan." Sam read the name off the fatigue shirt and hoped it was right.
Donovan smiled, "What the hell were you doing, ruining my weekend? You owe me a beer, buddy."
"Sure thing," Sam said. Just once he would like to not feel clueless at the start of a leap.
"Not so fast. After four hours unconscious, Mr. Parker has at least one more physical before I release him," said the Russian accented woman. She was about 5'7" and had auburn hair, alabaster skin and flashing green eyes.
"Ah, come on, Olga, have a heart." Donovan teased. She frowned at him.
"O.K. O.K.," he relented-- hands up in surrender. "Frank, I leave you to Dr. Vukovitch's tender mercies," Donovan said as he walked out of the door.
"Now that you are awake, Mr. Parker, let's have a more complete exam," Dr. Olga Vukovitch said as she snapped on latex gloves.
All Sam could think was 'Oh, Boy!'
*******************
Stallion's Gate, New Mexico
"Now this just isn't fair," Admiral Albert Calavicci was fuming. "I have a guest passed out cold in the waiting room, the imaging chamber is off line and Ziggy won't talk to me!"
"Oh, I'll talk to you, Admiral," the rich alto of Quantum Leap's Artificial Intelligence (Ziggy's) voice echoed in the control room, "I just don't have anything to tell you."
"Where's Sam?" demanded Al.
"I regret to inform you," Ziggy began, "that Dr. Beckett's whereabouts are currently unknown."
"I need a drink," Al groaned.
**********************
"I need a drink," groaned Frank Parker as he sat himself up. He was staring at four sterile white walls in a room with no discernable door. The only furniture in the room was the hospital-like gurney he sat on. This had been Frank's second thought on returning to consciousness. The first was that the aliens had reclaimed their sphere and taken him prisoner. His flight suit was missing, replaced with a white body suit and the bar-coded tattoo on his arm was gone.
**************************
Neverland
Having been determined to be "relatively undamaged" by Dr. Vukovitch, Sam was released from the infirmary and escorted to his quarters with the orders to get some rest "while Talmadge and Ramsey look over the data wafer". 'Whatever that means,' Sam thought. The pounding in his head had dulled a bit and he needed a shower.
As he helped himself to some clothes, he caught sight of himself in a mirror. A handsome man in his early thirties with dark brown hair and eyes looked back at him. "Hello, Frank Parker." He waved to the reflection and noticed the bar-coded tattoo on his forearm.
Now dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, Sam sat down at Frank's computer and began to learn all he could about Frank Parker. "It's February 6th," Sam noted by looking at the clock on the computer screen, "Two Thousand!" Sam's heart jumped in his chest. "I've leaped into the future!"
Sam was still in front of the computer an hour or so later when Donovan knocked on his door.
"What happened in the other timeline?" Donovan asked.
Sam just looked at him, puzzled.
"I guess I'm about to find out," Donovan shrugged. "Talmadge wants everyone in the briefing room ASAP."
"Coming," Sam said as he followed Donovan out the door.
In the briefing room, Sam began forming theories about where and who he was. He knew his name was Frank Parker and that the others around the table were co-workers of his in some military instillation called Never Neverland. The pretty Russian was Olga Vukovitch, some kind of doctor. The soldier, Donovan, called the G-man type in the cheap suit Ramsey and the balding bespectacled man in the wheelchair with the lollipop he called Ballard. A rather formal looking middle-aged man with a beard had called the briefing to order. Sam assumed him to be Talmadge, the one who had called the meeting.
"Let's get up to speed on this folks," Talmadge called for the briefing to begin.
"Shouldn't we wait for Dr. Mentnor?" Olga questioned. The name 'Mentnor' got Sam's attention.
"Isaac reviewed the data wafer as he downloaded it. He's checking with his contacts about some scenarios," Talmadge informed them. A hole in Sam's Swiss-cheesed brain began to twitch at him. "Frank?"
"Umm, what? Oh, sorry... I was...er..." Sam stalled and prayed for Al to appear in the Imaging Room and give him some information.
Olga chimed in, "What did the data wafer have on it?"
'Thank you Olga,' Sam thought.
Bradley Talmadge brought up the projection screen and began storytelling. "According to the data collected in the other timeline"
'Timeline?' Sam pondered.
"In five days a government installation at Stallion's Gate, New Mexico will explode, killing 287 people...."
Sam became aware of a heavy pain in his chest and suddenly felt nauseated.
"... of the joint congressional finance committee." Talmadge was continuing, "The project instillation"
"Quantum Leap" Sam supplied, accidentally aloud.
"Yes, Quantum Leap," Talmadge confirmed. "It appears that someone set a bomb off inside the facility."
Sam sat transfixed by the image on the projection screen of Stallion's Gate, his home for so many years, its top blown off-- looking like a smoking volcano. The photographs of four well-dressed people replaced the image.
"This is Senator Helene Mercer-Fuld, Congressmen Angelo Martinelli, Benjamin Fisher and Garrett Ho." Talmadge supplied, pointing to each picture in turn.
"The committee members?" Donovan questioned.
Bradley nodded and went on. The image changed yet again to a middle-aged Naval officer in uniform. "This is" Bradley began.
"Al" Sam interrupts softly.
All eyes in the room turn to him. "Admiral Albert Calavicci, the administrative head of Project Quantum Leap," Sam expanded; his eyes bright with unshed tears.
"And the only way we have of getting in, in order to stop this from happening," Bradley continued, "This is not just about the people in Stallion's Gate. The power source of the facility is nuclear and when it blew last time..."
"The radiation took out most of the southern United States and northern Mexico," Sam finished Talmadge's thought.
"Yes," Bradley retook the floor. "Now, as a military officer, despite his current assignment, Calavicci can be ordered to fall under our jurisdiction for National Security. I'd like to get our people into the security force over there, tighten it up. Nate," he turned to Ramsey, "I need fifty of your best."
"Got it," Ramsey said.
"That's not the way in," an elderly voice said from the doorway. Isaac Mentnor entered the room looking grim. Sam looked at him with Frank Parker's eyes. Isaac had aged well in the twenty years since he had been Sam Beckett's physics professor at M.I.T. He had been fascinated by Sam's time travel theory.
"...icci is eccentric but runs a tight unit. He won't take kindly to commando tactics at his base." Isaac was saying. "I've just been on the phone with a former student of mine who works at Quantum Leap. I've got an invitation. I'll take Craig and Frank with me. Between the three of us we can do the reconnaissance."
Bradley chewed this over for a moment before agreeing.
"While you do that," Talmadge continued, "Nate and I will get a command base set up at Socorro. It's not enough to stop this bombing, people, we also need to catch the bomber."
"It's about 400 miles to Socorro," noted Nate Ramsey.
"Which is why we need to begin moving out as quickly as we can," finished Bradley.
"I don't think Mr. Parker is up to an eight hour car trip," piped up Olga.
"You are still looking a bit pale, Frank." Ballard added.
Sam began to protest when Craig came to his rescue.
"Why don't I bring Isaac and Frank by helicopter?" he offered. "It'll take about 3 hours in the air."
Bradley considered this for a moment and then agreed.
"We'll leave in the morning," said Isaac.
****** Continued in Chapter 2 ***********