She stood in a deserted corridor, before a closed conventional door, the snowflake pattern blossoming in her mind and the mantra on her lips. Although the door was unmarked, she knew that beyond it was an operating room. She was again in a hospital.
But this hospital was Earth-side; the gravity was Earth's. She was ten years in her own past.
The headache burned behind her eyes, considerably more intense than it had before this jump. She couldn't concentrate. Yet she knew she had to concentrate with all her mind; she had much to do.
In her right hand she carried a blaster pistol, while the one Renford had given her only a few minutes before was still holstered at her hip. She had stolen the weapon she held after she'd made the jump to this time. For what she must do, she needed a functional blaster.
Reaching out, she turned the door handle. It twisted beneath her grip and she pushed the door open and walked through; she was in the operating room.
It was empty. The surgeons and technicians who would soon fill the room had not yet arrived, and her own past self had not yet been wheeled in, unconscious, on a gurney. Still, all the equipment was laid out, ready to go.
She went to a wheeled tray beside the operating table and scanned the instruments. The laser scalpel, forceps, and various other surgical instruments were positioned neatly and precisely on one side of the tray. On the other side was a pair of prosthetic arms and hands, covered with flesh-colored plasti-alloy. Beside them, still in its mold, lay the metal skull plate that would be inserted in her past self's head.
Carefully, she pried the plate from its mold, and it popped out with little effort. She tossed the skull plate into the corner of the room beneath a low equipment bench, then lifted one of the pendants from around her neck, parted a link of its silver chain, and detached it. She threw the chain beneath the equipment bench with the skull plate.
Positioning the lump of dull gray metal in the center of the mold, she made certain the blaster was on a low-power setting.
She trained the weapon on the lump of metal at short range and pulled the trigger. The pendant melted instantly, precisely filling the mold. It would cool quickly, and by the time the surgeons were ready to implant it, it would be at room temperature.
She tossed the blaster under the equipment bench as well, then stepped away from the tray. That part was done. But there was still more she had to accomplish before she was finished-before she could jump to Photon.
Turning, she stepped to the door, opened it, and produced another jump as she stepped out into the corridor.
She was in another corridor. No longer on Earth; the gravity was Luna's. The crowd was huge, and shop fronts lined the corridor on either side. This was the exchange area, on Fleet Base.
To her left, fifty feet down a side corridor, stood the curio shop she had visited less than a week ago. Within, she knew she would find the old man.
But it was not him she was interested in. Not yet. It was the only other occupant of that shop for whom she had come.
She eased back into the crowd, into a small dark space between two shops. Lifting one of the two remaining pendants from around her neck, she placed it out of sight, in the pouch at her waist. Then she drew the blaster pistol Renford had given her and waited. The blaster would not function in this time: she knew that. But to accomplish what it must, it didn't have to.
She didn't have long to wait. In less than a minute she spotted her other self emerging from the branch corridor. And in that instant that other self spotted her.
A look of pure horror washed over the other's features as Susan brought the blaster pistol up, centering it on her other self through a gap in the crowd. Then the other disappeared.
Just as Susan knew she would.
Quickly, she holstered her weapon; she didn't want the rest of the crowd to see it. She couldn't afford to cause a panic like she had in Times Square so many years ago.
She knew what she must do next. She had to jump thirty or forty years into the past, while maintaining her spatial location here in the Fleet Base exchange area.
But exactly what time should she jump to? It had to be precise, so she would end up when she knew she must.
Or did it? Could she simply jump to any time between thirty and forty years? Would she be guaranteed to end up where she had, because she had?
Either way, she had no choice. She did not know the exact time she must achieve, so she could not possibly achieve it. And so, she split the difference- thirty-five years into the past.
At first she thought her surroundings had not changed in the least. Then she noticed that the crowd was considerably thinner than it had been an instant before. And the shops were slightly different, too. They looked somehow newer. Yet she was still on Luna, definitely in the Fleet exchange area.
She started for the side corridor where the curio shop was located. There was less dust on the corridor floor than there had been the last time she had been here. Before she reached the shop she stopped dead in her tracks, a cold shiver running up her spine.
The sign above the shop's entrance was different. Where before it had read, Eddie's Out-System Curios, it now read, Sylvia's Fine Clothes.
She glanced around. Most of the shops seemed to house the same businesses they had in her own time, but a few did not. There was an arcade where there should have been a small Greek restaurant, a low-grav gym where an electronics repair shop stood in her time. And where the curio shop should have been stood a boutique.
Had her jumping around somehow altered the past? She knew it had to some extent, but had she caused this? Had she so changed what she thought of as reality that she would never be able to bring about what she knew she must in order to succeed?
Perhaps not. Maybe this far back, the curio shop had been a boutique. But if that was true, how could she possibly sell the pendant to the old man?
She went down the short corridor to the boutique's door and it irised open. Inside were racks of clothing. She stepped back into the corridor and the door irised closed.
There was no doubt about it-this was not the correct time. She had gone too far into the past.
But how far up the time line into the future should she go? A year? Two years?
One year, she decided, simply because she had to decide something. She formed the thought in her mind, then jumped.
The headache flared behind her eyes. Then the snowflake pattern and the mantra. But neither seemed to work any longer. As before, the headache remained worse than it had been after her previous jump.
And the sign remained the same.
But perhaps…
She stepped to the door and it irised open. Within were the shelves she remembered from her own time, although they were considerably less cluttered.
Once inside, the door irised closed behind her. She took the pendant from the pouch at her waist, put it back around her neck with its twin, then started down the aisle between the rows of shelves.
"Can I help you…?" came a familiar paper-thin voice from behind.
She turned around. The man didn't look much younger than he had been in Susan's time.
"Tann-," she started, making her voice two octaves lower than usual. But then she realized she probably shouldn't give her real name. "Hansen," she finished, "Brian Hansen."
"Can I be of some assistance, Mr. Hansen?" Her disguise had worked.
"Yes," she said. "I would like to sell one of these." She lifted the pendants from around her neck.
"Just one?"
She nodded. "I must keep one." She put one in the pouch at her waist, then held the other out to the old man. She felt the weight of the pendant in the pouch disappear as he took the one she offered.
"I'm afraid I can't give you much for it," he said. "Where is it from?"
"The Crab Nebula, from a planet circling its star of origin."
He nodded. "What is it?"
"Just a pendant. Jewelry."
He shrugged. "Like I said, I can't give you much."
"That's fine. I just want to sell it."
"I could give you a bit more for both." Susan shook her head, and he shrugged again. "Follow me," he said.
She followed him to the back of the shop. The same green terminal sat atop the desk as had in her time. She almost pulled her LIN/C from its pouch, then noticed there was no slot to receive it in the terminal. Now, more than thirty years before she had first met this man, the LIN/C hadn't yet been developed.
"Didn't there used to be a boutique here?" she asked as the old man sat and began typing at the terminal.
"Yes." He worked at the keyboard as if unaccustomed to using it. "They went out of business, and I took this spot over three weeks ago. I haven't even had time to change the sign outside. By the way, how did you know I was here?"
"A friend told me," she lied.
Again he nodded. "I don't know what to call this place when I finally get around to having a sign made."
"What's your name?" Of course, she knew what it was.
"Sims," he said. "Roger Sims."
Her heart stopped beating. His name was wrong. It had to be Eddie. She thought fast.
"I don't think that will look good on the sign."
"Why not?"
"Somehow, it just doesn't sound right."
She was quiet for a few seconds, thinking. Where had Eddie come from?
"What's your middle name?"
"Edward." And she breathed a silent sigh of relief.
"How about using that in the sign. Maybe Eddie's Out-System Curios?"
The old man repeated the name. Then was quiet for a few seconds. Finally, he said, "It does sound good. I just might use it."
He handed Susan two and a half credits, and she put the money in the pouch that only a few seconds before had held the other pendant. "Thanks," she said as she turned and walked to the door.
The old man followed. On her way down the aisle Susan heard him drop the pendant on a shelf. The door irised open.
"Come again," he said as she stepped out into the corridor.
"I will," she responded without looking back. She didn't tell him it would be thirty-six years in the future.