May 6, 1937
The visible flames from the giant balloon filled with hydrogen gas is actually the balloon material; the burning hydrogen gas is nearly invisible. Black smoke rises up from the burning balloon which until a half a minute ago, was lifting the airship known as the Hindenburg, which had left Frankfurt au main in Frankfurt, Germany on May 3rd, for a three day flight across the Atlantic Ocean that would take the zeppelin to Naval Air Station Lakehurst in Lakehurst, New Jersey.
The passengers hads felt relief that their three-day journey in the skies above the Atlantic were about to end as they saw the grounds of the naval air station approaching.
But disaster struck, the the hydrogen lifting gas was ignited, burning the whole thing. In half a minute, twenty-seven lives had been lost, and many more people had been severely burned or otherwise injured.
Navy firefighters do their best to quench the burning flames, with vehicles already there. Navy corpsmen look for injured survivors. Their hearts are racing and they are fully alert.
Among the many witnesses who saw the Hindenburg burst into flames is an eleven-year old boy wearing trousers, a shirt, and a flat cap. He is embraced by a man wearing a uniform of a United States Navy sailor.
Unknown to the boy, or any of the other sailors in Lakehurst, the man in the uniform is not a sailor in the United States Navy.
Nor is he even a native of this time.
He is Dr. Sam Beckett, a quantum physicist from the future who had stepped into a quantum leap accelerator and began leaping from life to life, putting right what once went wrong.
He looks at the flaming bag of gas, the orange flames going up to the darkening sky.
Someone else wearing a purple outfit also watches the burning Hindenburg and the rescue efforts by Navy personnel. However, he is not really here.
Nor is he in this time.
He is observing from sixty-four years in the future!
"Looks like that's it," says Navy Admiral Al Calavicci, the principal observer for Project Quantum Leap.
"Yeah," replies the leaper, still looking at the burning wreckage. "Too bad it had to happen."
"Yeah," says the boy.
"Maybe," replies Al.
Maybe Sam could prevent that disaster in the next leap? But what if stopping it means that Hitler conquers the world? Or somehow prevents me from ever meeting Beth? And this is the third time this year Sam's leapt out of his lifetime. If only Gooshie were still here...
A blue aura surrounds Sam, unseen by anyone in this time, and he leaps out of this time.
The aura coalesces around Sam, and the leaper finds himself in a new time, new place, new life. The first thing he notices is a mound of dirt. He feels his hands around something, and he notices they are motorcycle handles.
He glances at the speedometer, recording a speed of sixty miles per hour.
He suddenly finds himself and the motorcycle he had just inadvertently "borrowed" rising high into the air.
"Oh boy!" he yells.