Admiral Nelson sat in his quarters in the dark. Two days gone. Nash had been relieved of duty, and Sharkey had all the keys to the arsenal and the arms lockers scattered about the boat. All weapons were present and accounted for. Nash was never alone. He couldn't get a weapon, couldn't get loose on his own… Surely they had already won?

And yet… He shifted uneasily, listening to the sounds of the boat around him: the hum of the engines, the gentle hiss of the air revitalization unit, the sounds of men in the corridor outside heading about their business. Around the corner in his own cabin, Lee would be settling in for the night. Chip was probably working on reports… Neither of them really knew what was going to happen tomorrow…

Chip had done a good job. He had watched Nash, pinpointed the problem, and done something about it. As always, he had risen to the occasion, even with limited intel, and no real grasp of the situation. He had done his job with the consummate skill he always showed, and Lee should be safe… Yet, somehow Nelson knew that the problem persisted. Despite Chip's work, despite Nelson's own surreptitious efforts, something tragic would happen in the morning… He simply couldn't shake the feeling. He closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the chair. Was the sense of dread in his stomach simply a holdover from the first time he'd lived through this? Was it possible that he felt sick because he still held the memory of Lee's death in the morning?

Or was there more to it?

He lifted a trembling hand and switched on the globe on his desk, suffusing the room in its soft glow. Somehow the dim light didn't make anything look any better. His mind whirled in circles as the hour approached, and nothing he told himself convinced him that the danger was past.

He opened his drawer and took out the pocket watch, as if holding it in his hand would make him feel better, but it didn't take the dread away. How had any of this been possible?

He had always thought of time as linear… A sort of one-way street. Once you'd passed through the present, it became the past and you could never go back… But what if time were more like an ocean? What if every life cast a pebble into the ocean of time, sending out ripples that eventually washed against the shores of the future? If that were the case, it should be possible to build a ship that could travel on that ocean, following the ripples back to their origins… And if it were possible to do that, it would be possible to go beyond the origin, following the ripples of that life backward into the past to see how the past changed the present and the future… What if actions were simply more pebbles, making myriad ripples that fled toward the shores of future and past, causing epic tidal waves that could be controlled by the wayfarer on the ship, afloat on the ocean…

Why would a man choose to trust himself to the storms that moved across the face of that ocean? What did Pem stand to gain from helping Nelson? What ripples would be forever changed if the admiral were able to save his friend? Would the outcomes that swept outwards from this turning point cause irreparable damage, or would the changes be good ones? How would he ever know?

What were the rules that Pem had spoken of? Was it ethical to change the present, and thus the future? In traveling to the past to change the present, would he banish someone from existence? Would the tapestry threads that held the future together unravel if Lee lived? Did he have the right to act selfishly because this death hurt so much?

Or was time like he'd always believed, unchangeable, except for the future? Would he fail to save Lee, because no matter what he did, the past was fixed? Could he stand that revelation should it force itself upon him?

He threw the pocket watch down on his desk, hating it suddenly. What would he do if he couldn't change this? What would he do if he could? Too many unanswered and unanswerable questions. He wondered if Pem's time travel device would drive him crazy…

But no… It wouldn't be time travel that drove him insane…

Nelson rose from his chair, the movement so abrupt that the chair spun wildly for a moment, before slowly turning to a stop. He told himself there wasn't anything tangible behind this feeling. He dreaded the morning because three days ago, Lee had died. But tomorrow would be different. It had to be. If that changed the future irrevocably, so be it. He wouldn't lose another friend; he wouldn't lose the son he'd so desperately needed… He wouldn't lose a man. It wouldn't happen.

And if he did… He stared at the photos of John, Jiggs, and himself in younger, happier days. One had pride of place on the wall behind his desk, a reminder of the importance of good friends. John was laughing right into the camera, his arm draped lazily across Jiggs' shoulder, while Nelson was in profile, looking at Jiggs, a smile large on his face… Jiggs, too, was smiling, though he looked intensely uncomfortable in his winter dress blues. The photograph had been taken at John's wedding to Evelyn, and the men in the picture were all young and fit and alive with endless potential. John's collar pips gleamed gold, oak leaves that told his rank – Lt. Com. Phillips at the time. Nelson remembered that the wedding ring Evelyn had placed on his finger was chased with those gold oak leaves… The ring was gone now, buried with John four years ago.

If he did lose a man… He closed his eyes against the thought, but couldn't prevent himself thinking selfishly, anyone but Lee…

He wondered if he could live with that thought, should someone else die in Lee's place. He wondered if he would use the watch again, if given the chance… He wondered how his actions would affect the men who worked for him on this boat, how his decision to venture backward in time would change their lives for better or for worse. Possibly he had already set in motion the ripples that would take another man from him. Who would it be? When would it happen? Tomorrow, or later… Was it inevitable, or could that, too, be changed?

The thoughts awoke a throbbing ache in his head. This had to stop… If he couldn't get any sleep tonight, he wouldn't be prepared for whatever the morning brought. Chip had done the job he'd been asked to do. Lee was surely safe, and Nash was surely neutralized. All he had to do was believe that…

Why couldn't he believe that?