Saks looked up from the chart. “So these eggheads, they worked for the Navy at one time? Part of something called Project Neptune?” He shook his head. “You expect me to believe that the Navy wastes time on shit like this?”
“They wasted time on the Philadelphia Experiment, didn’t they?” Pollard said. “Who knows what kind of crazy shit our government is up to?”
“Philadelphia Experiment? What the hell is that?” Saks waved it away like he didn’t honestly care. “You telling me our government knows about this shit and don’t do nothing about it? I can’t buy that. You buy this shit, George?”
But George didn’t say; he just studied the chart.
Fabrini laughed. “You’re naive, Saks. You know that? You think those politicians ever tell the truth? All they do is lie and cover-up shit.”
Menhaus said, “You won’t get Saks to believe that, Fabrini. He believes whatever those lying shits tell him. Blind faith.”
Saks slammed his hand down on the table. “Menhaus, you’re a fucking idiot and we all know it. I don’t believe anything those lying fuckwigs in Washington say. I was in Vietnam, dipshit, I know all about lies and cover-ups. Don’t you be telling me what I believe, because you don’t have a clue.”
“All right, already,” George said. “We’re not talking politics here. We’re listening to Cushing. Maybe if you all shut up long enough he can say what he’s got to say.”
There was no argument about that.
“Point is,” Cushing said, “that these scientists got themselves trapped in here same as us. They know something about this place and how it can exist. Greenberg called it Dimension X and that’s good enough. We’re stuck on some rotting, misty world on the dirty backside of Dimension X…”
He went on to cover pretty much what was in the letter and Greenberg’s theories about wormholes and interdimensional passage. It was heavy, heady stuff, but Cushing tried to explain it as simply as he could. Even he, with his scientific leanings, was pretty confused about it all, he admitted. But it all made sense in the long run, he told them. Greenberg explained how they got here and maybe, just maybe, how they could get back out.
“Sure,” Fabrini said. “But if what Elizabeth here says about her uncle is true, well, what chance have we got? He looked for that vortex to open and it never did. So where does that leave us?”
“You’re missing something, though,” Crycek said, pointing at Fabrini with the letter. “In here, Greenberg says that he’s going back to that ship, that Lancet, says that it’s the key. That it’s the key to deliverance from this place.”
“That’s right,” Cushing said. “The Lancet. What Greenberg referred to as a cursed ship. I don’t know what he means by that, but obviously this ship is important. He doesn’t say anything about us waiting around down in the Sea of Mists hoping that vortex’ll open. He seemed to think that the only way out was through something on the Lancet or through maybe the Lancet itself.”
“He also said that if we go back through, we might end up in some other time,” Saks said. “Maybe that’s just some voodoo crazy bullshit, maybe not. If it isn’t… Christ, who knows where we’d end up?”
“Who gives a shit?” Menhaus said. “I mean, does it really matter? Maybe the time-thing would reverse itself like he said and if it doesn’t? Fuck it. The tenth or fifteenth century beats the shit out of this place, way I’m looking at it.”
George looked up from the chart when he said that, smiled. That was it in a nutshell, wasn’t it? Good old Earth in the good old third dimension beat the shit out of this place any day of the week. For there you had sunshine and blue skies and people and, yes, hope. When you were home, there was always hope. That’s how George was seeing it. He wanted his time back, wanted it back in the worst way because he had a wife and a kid, but he’d take earth any way he could get it.
“Okay, Cushing,” Saks said. “Since you’ve appointed yourself as the half-ass expert on this science-fiction bullshit, let me ask you something. That egghead… he’s talking about time bending or curving or whatever… so what happens if we come back two hours before we sailed? We go up to ourselves and say, hey, knothead, don’t get on that fucking tub?”
“If we have to.”
