Rescue in Greenland

Clomp. Clomp. Clomp. Hobnailed boots goose-stepping on the hut's rough-sawn
planks drowned out the howl of Arctic wind.

"Would you please knock that off?"

A hand shot forth, palm down raised in stiff-armed salute. "Jawol, Herr
Kapitan."

"Cut that out."

"Don't be stupid, be a smarty; come and join the Nazi Party."

Dr. Sidney Feynman looked up from the radio gear arrayed before him on a desk
contrived from packing crates. The orange glow of vacuum tubes lit his face
from below, distorting his features. "Nell, do you want this to appear in my
report?"

"You can't touch me, Sid. I have tenure," Dr. Nell Playfair replied.

"Tenure won't stop me from strangling you. Besides, you won't be granted
tenure for over 200 years."

Nell flounced into a char in full pout-mode. "It's not fair. You've got
something to do. I have to wait."

"Why couldn't you disguise us as something more comfortable and less
objectionable, like a Air Force DEW station?"

"Can you imagine what would happen if museum-quality reproductions of 1950s
military gear were found in the 1940s in Greenland? It'd be another Roswell,
only worse. We know the Germans had clandestine weather stations in Greenland
and nobody will be the wiser if someone trips over one more."

A weary sigh escaped Sid. "Ok, you're the historian, but could you be a little
more politically correct about it?"

Nell grinned evilly and began to sing, "When Der Führer says, 'Ve ist der
master race' Ve HEIL! Ve HEIL! Right in Der Führer's face..."

Sid grimaced with the raspberry sounds that punctuated each "Heil." He found
the song annoying but at least it was less offensive. He tried to concentrate
on the radio navigation beacon he was monitoring. It's power fluctuated,
fading in and out with the whims of the ionosphere. He checked the handheld
spectrum analyzer, a bit of 23rd Century gear, and verified the transmitter's
signature hadn't changed. Every radio transmitter had subtle telltales and the
navigation beacon was no exception.

The Nazis, real ones, set up phony navigation beacons to confuse Allied pilots
flying between America and Britain. But they didn't broadcast continually and
thus Sid monitored the signal and waited for its change to indicate that the
Nazis were at work.

***

Second Lieutenant Carl Galt double checked his mental arithmetic and came to
the same conclusion. Something was definitely wrong. He checked the time on
his watch for the tenth time. It hadn't stopped and appeared to be running
fine. Carl toyed with the idea of tuning the radio to a commercial station in
hopes that an announcer would read the time and confirm his wristwatch. Carl
keyed his microphone.

"Ferry leader, this is ferry three. Are you sure our course is correct?"

After a second, the radio crackled. "Ferry three, I've got a rock solid radio
beacon. I find no reason to think we're off course." Ferry Leader, Captain Sam
Bollard, did things by the book. He even played cards according to Hoyle.

"Ferry leader, I just computed a celestial navigation solution and I think
we're off course."

"Carl, what do you mean? You don't have any celestial nav tables with you."

"Uh, Ferry Leader, I did the math in my head." Carl realized that the
mathematical talent that he took for granted hadn't made it into Sam's book.

"At this latitude?"

"It just makes the spherical trigonometry more interesting, Captain."

"Carl, you may be the best poker player I've ever met, but I don't believe you
can do celestial nav in your head. After all, you're not even trained as a
navigator."

"Yes, sir. I'm sorry Captain."

Carl toyed with the idea of breaking formation with the other P-38s they were
ferrying to England, but he realized that doing so would be gross
insubordination. He flew on in silence, hoping he was wrong. If he was right,
he was as good as dead.

***

Sid adjusted his US Air Force uniform. He felt a lot more comfortable leaving
the Nazi paraphernalia in the hut.

Nell grinned and pulled a tarpaulin away to reveal two shiny yellow
snowmobiles.

"Ski-Doo. That doesn't sound German or even US Air Force," Sid observed.

"It's Canadian. And we're not Air Force. We're Army Air Corps. The US Air
Force doesn't exist yet. These snowmobiles are reproductions of a 1960s design
and that's a problem. But we can push them into a deep crevasse and reasonably
expect nobody to find them for a hundred years. We can't do that with our
listening post."

Sid poured gas from his gerry can into the nearest snowmobile while Nell
slowly cranked the two-cycle engine to prime its carburetor. "This is going to
be fun," she muttered. Louder, she continued, "Check your walkie-talkie."

While he adjusted the miniature radio in his ear canal, Sid wondered what
could be fun about exposing oneself to the wind and snow on some godforsaken
glacier. With both snowmobiles fuelled, they donned helmets and roared off,
each towing a bobsled. A tiny projection system superimposed mapping data on
Sid's helmet visor.

Soon he knew how much fun the snowmobiles were. Nell was a pain sometimes, but
she could be a lot of fun. Sid realized he was taking his job too seriously.
After bouncing over snowdrifts for a half-hour they crested a ridge and
stopped to look.

Nell shouted against the wind. "They're down there somewhere. We know they
left the airplanes. Presumably looking for shelter."

They roared down into the valley and onto the glacier. The aircraft were
exactly where the records said they should be. Slowly the snowmobiles began to
spiral outward seeking the missing personnel.

Nell's voice came over the walkie-talkie. "They won't get far in this mess."

She was right, the weather, never good, was rapidly deteriorating. After
another twenty minutes of searching, Sid saw a dark blob in front of him. Four
pilots-three men and a woman-huddled together.

"Home on my signal, Nell. I've found them," Sid pulled his snowmobile beside
the pilots. He swung around them so they could shelter in the lee of his
bobsled. Moments later, Nell's snowmobile pulled up alongside.

Sid slapped a heat pack against his thigh, activating it, and handed it to the
nearest pilot, a Captain. Another heat pack went to a RAF Lieutenant. The
third pilot, a Second Lieutenant was probably the target. Nell gave a heat
pack to the fourth and deployed the space blankets. Soon she wrapped each in
aluminized Mylar. They distributed fur coats, made space for the pilots in the
bobsleds, and then secured them therein.

Sid attached an adhesive medical monitor at the base of each pilot's neck.
Nell made a quick check. Only the woman was at immediate risk of hypothermia.
They slipped two more heat packs inside her space blanket. A quick nod and
they were off.

***

Carl was pretty sure the afterlife did not involve a rough bouncing ride in a
bobsled. He'd fuzzed out a bit on the long walk through that white blowing
hell. Last he knew he'd stopped with the others to huddle for warmth. RAF
Leftenant Brenda Bisset, had the least body mass and thus lost heat the
fastest. She'd collapsed. The other Brit, Leftenant Alex Lanning, with Sam's
help tried to carry her. After that nothing he could remember. Then the guy
shoved something hot into his hands. Who...

Carl had been right about the radio beacon and found cold comfort being right
and out of fuel over Greenland. At least it was better than the North
Atlantic. Sam eventually realized the Nazis had fooled them and turned back to
Greenland. The weather closed in and they were lucky to get down intact. Then
the Army Air Corps people showed up.

Carl was surprised the Air Corps had people in this part of Greenland. Come to
think of it. The odds of being found were somewhere between zero and winning
seven consecutive Irish Sweepstakes. No, that wasn't right-more than seven. He
spent the rest of the ride refining his estimate.

***

The bobsled slowed. Carl peeked out from between the furs to see a small
wooden hut with an attached antenna mast and an anemometer spinning madly on
its roof. Something looked vaguely wrong about the hut, but he couldn't place
it. He waited patiently as the Army Captain and his assistant helped his
companions out of the other bobsled and into the hut. He thought it odd that
there were only two people involved in the rescue.

He moved to get up and found himself pinned in place by Captain Sam Bollard
wrapped up in furs and sitting in front of him on the bobsled. Carl nudged Sam
in the ribs. "Does something seem funny to you, Captain?" Carl felt Sam nod.

Carl eased his hand to the holster that held his service pistol and undid the
snap. Sam got out of the bobsled, freeing Carl. He suddenly shivered from the
cold and felt something chafe his neck. He vaguely remembered someone had
stuck something there. It came loose with a tug. Carl looked the white flat
square with a sticky backside, shrugged and jammed it into his pocket.

Suddenly, a figure came bolting out of the hut. A woman's voice-a woman in
Greenland? A woman shouted into the wind. "You scared me, taking off the
monitor like that. It's watching your core body temperature. Hurry up and get
inside, without it I can't tell if you go hypothermic." The woman grabbed Carl
by the elbow and began dragging him inside.

Carl looked at Sam who shrugged. With his free arm Carl eased his gun out of
its holster and into his pocket. He felt like a guy in a movie.

The inside of the hut looked more wrong than the outside. He didn't recognize
the brands of canned food on the wall. Closer, he saw the labels were written
in German. Scanning further, he saw a mass of radio gear. The most damning
sight was the swastika stenciled on a large condenser.

Carl's mouth went dry. The rescuers had to be Germans. But the woman didn't
have a German accent. Spies were taught to speak without accents-weren't they?
He realized that everything he knew about Nazi spies came from propaganda
films and that didn't make him feel better.

The other spy was handing a steaming coffee cup to Brenda. Alex sat beside her
on a bunk sipping coffee. The smell of the coffee and warmth of the hut was
heavenly. Maybe this was the afterlife... No, there weren't any Nazis in
heaven. Carl shook his head to clear his thoughts. Sam stood behind him. Carl
pulled his gun on the woman. He was too scared and his mouth too dry to do
anything more than croak. Errol Flynn or Ronald Reagan never stood awkwardly
unable to speak when they got the drop on Nazi spies.

Sam spoke up, "Step back against the wall. Both of you."

The guy looked up, startled. His eyes grew large as he looked into Carl and
Sam's drawn guns. His Adam's apple worked up and down, but he didn't speak.
Maybe Raymond Massey's mouth went dry, too.

Finally, he found his voice. "Nell, this is all your fault. Why couldn't you
go with the 1950s Air Force disguise?"

The other Nazi spy-Nell-replied, "Calm down, Sid. All we have to do is tell
Captain Bollard and Second Lieutenant Galt who we are and they'll put their
guns down. But first, I'm worried about Carl's body temperature. Lieutenant
Galt, would you mind? Please take a cup of coffee. Or if you'd prefer, I have
some hot broth on the stove."

Carl wanted nothing more in the whole world than coffee and after that maybe a
smoke. He nodded and poured a cup. It warmed him wonderfully.

"Stand back now, sister," Sam growled.

"Sorry." The woman backed up against the wall. "Sid, could you please stand
next to me like Captain Bollard wants?"

"How do you know my name?" Sam asked.

"History," the spy named Sid answered.

The woman interrupted him. "It's a little hard to explain, Captain. I am Nell
Playfair, Ph.D. a Historian, and my colleague is Sid Feynman, Ph.D. an
Aerospace Engineer. We're from the University of Michigan working under
contract to General Interplanetary. We came to Greenland to save your lives."

"You're Nazi spies," Sam insisted.

"How do you explain the labels on the canned goods and the markings on this
radio equipment." Carl spoke while he inspected the gear and noticed that all
the vacuum tubes were smashed and cold. He wouldn't be sending any distress
calls with this rig.

"I want anyone who finds this camp to think it belonged to a secret German
weather station. Maybe Sid was right and I should have made it look like a DEW
station."

"What's a dew station?" Sam asked.

"An acronym for Defense Early Warning. After the war the US Air Force-they
renamed the Army Air Corps-will set up radar stations looking for a Russian
attack that never came."

"You talk like a fortune teller." Carl observed.

"I'm a Historian, not a fortune teller. I'm describing history that hasn't
happened yet. We're from the future."

Sam blurted, "That's ridiculous."

"I can prove it." Nell slowly reached into her uniform's breast pocket and
with two fingers pulled out what looked like a gray cigarette case. She held
it out toward Carl. "Place this on the table next to you. When you push the
button on the top, you'll see something startling. Please do not be alarmed."

Carl gingerly took the cigarette case and examined it. There were no
cigarettes inside. Disappointing, he was dying for a smoke. The case's
material wasn't metal or wood, it reminded him of Bakelite but not as stiff.
He pushed the button and stepped back. Nothing happened for a second. Then a
light sprang from the device. It flashed back and forth and resolved itself
into a spectral form. Carl looked over at Sam who stood mouth agape and face
ashen. Carl looked back. The light-figure looked exactly like whatever he
expected a ghost to look like.

Carl recognized the figure. It was Nell and she was speaking. "...the Second
World War transformed Greenland from an insular Danish colony into a de facto
American military outpost. Its significance in the subsequent Cold War with
the Soviet Empire cannot be underestimated." The voice droned on in what was
obviously a recorded history lecture that went on to describe in detail the
fall of the Third Reich and the start of an extended low-level conflict with
the Commies. Carl started to doubt that Nazi spy training included techniques
for boring people to death.

"I'll cover the spies while you look closer, Captain."

Sam walked around the lecturing ghost peering at it from all angles. After a
few seconds, Alex took over the task of guarding the spies while Carl studied
it. Brenda joined them first studying the spectral image and then relieving
Alex, who also paled at the spectral spectacle.

Sam spoke quietly out of the side of his mouth. "What is this, a ghost?"

Carl shook his head, "No. I don't believe in ghosts."

"But look." Sam waved his hand through the ghost-Nell's torso.

Sid spoke up. "It's a hologram."

"A hollow what?" Alex asked.

"Like a movie projection."

Carl spoke slowly. His words as much question as statement. "But the image is
three dimensional."

"That's because the interference patterns retain phase information."

Carl wrinkled his brow. "You'd need a phase coherent light source." Nazi spies
weren't supposed to know such technical stuff-were they? The movies didn't
say.

"That's where the lasers come in. The lasers take a Fourier transform of the
scene and store that for playback now."

"Lasers?"

"A phase-coherent light source."

Sam's voice showed the same irritation as the last time Carl had cleaned him
out in poker. "What are you guys talking in, Greek?"

"No, they're speaking Geek. It's an occupational hazard for guys like Sid and
Carl." This Nell woman was a veritable font of smart-aleck comments.

"Geek?" Brenda asked.

Sam gave up on getting useful information from Nell. "Lieutenant Galt, what
are you talking about?"

"It's technical. This holothingie uses technology that makes time travel seem
quaint. I once read this story by H.G. Wells..." Carl stopped himself. "Captain,
I believe these people are telling the truth about being from the future. But
for all I know they may be Nazis from the future."

Sam frowned. "I have to quit thinking like an Army officer and start thinking
like a civilian lawyer again," he muttered. He turned to Sid. "So, if this
story you're telling me is true, you've gone to a lot of trouble. You did so
with some quid pro quo in mind. Why did you go to that trouble, Dr. Feynman?"

Sid pointed at Carl. "For him, Carl Galt."

Carl jumped in surprise. "What's so special about me?"

Sid took a deep breath before speaking. Nell muttered, "Lift your feet, its
gonna get deep in here." This earned dirty looks from both Sid and Sam, who
found something in common: irritation with Nell.

"It started three years ago, 2278, when I was doing a literature search." Sid
paused and looked at Nell. "I made the mistake of asking Nell for help." Sam
nodded in sympathy. "She focused her investigation on Dr. Greg Brighton of
MIT, a preeminent mathematician of the 20th century. He ended up with an Erdös
number bigger than anybody."

"And that created a lot of Erdös envy," she muttered, then louder, "He was the
alpha math-geek."

"Right, he ended up Chairman of his Math department. Of interest to me, he
published two tantalizing papers in the 1940s on String Theory. But they were
strangely incomplete. I went to Nell to find out why. What she found was an
unpublished paper that had been submitted to Dr. Brighton for peer-review and
that paper was the mother lode. The cover letter written by Dr. Isaac Cohen of
the University of Michigan said that nobody there could understand the paper
and would Brighton kindly take a look at it."

"Hey, I sent a note to Dr. Cohen describing a process whereby higher
dimensions might be rolled up onto a four dimensional manifold. That was last
month," Carl interjected.

"That's the one," Nell added.

"Brighton wrote back to Cohen saying the paper was great stuff and he had to
talk to the author."

"Cohen told him to never mind because the author had died in Greenland when
his airplane went missing. Brighton wrote a couple papers based on the parts
of Carl's work that he could understand. Those were the ones that got me
interested. Carl is probably the greatest mathematical talent since Gauss."

Carl blushed at the thought. "So, why are you rescuing me instead of Evariste
Galois right after he lost his duel over the honor of a prostitute."

Sid shook his head. "We think you're smarter than that. Besides, we know all
we need to about Group Theory, but we're flummoxed about String Theory. Your
paper looks like you now understand or soon will understand what we don't. We
hope you'll be able to cut the Gordian knot for us as it were."

Nell spoke up. "We have to avoid things that would change history. If we
showed up with butterfly nets in Paris 1832, someone would notice. That's why
we built this fake-believe Nazi weather station, and used those 1960s-vintage
snowmobiles. If this stuff gets found, it needs a reasonable explanation that
doesn't include time travel. Anything that's from our own time is hand held
and kept on our persons at all times."

Sid wrapped things up. "Fifty years from now your planes will be found, but
your bodies won't."

Carl thought a long time before speaking. He rubbed the back of his neck and
wished for his pipe. "So, what is it that's so important that you have to
understand String Theory?"

Sid grinned for the first time. "General Interplanetary is building a
faster-than-light drive."

"That's impossible, Einstein has proved that."

Sid nodded, but held up his hand. "That's why we have to tunnel under
space-time. The entanglement of intermediate bosons and gravitons limits the
Tolerude-singularity. We need a String Theorist to sort it out."

Brenda spoke up. "I don't suppose you could drop the rest of us off at
London?"

"I know a nice pub in Oxford," Alex added.

"No, you'll have to come back with us. We don't have a choice. We have to
minimize distortions to the timeline."

Sam asked the question Carl was thinking. "What if we don't want to go?"

Nell shook her head slowly. "Then we'll leave you here. We've done everything
I can think of to preserve the timeline."

"A timeline in which we do not survive," Carl observed archly.

Sid winced at the sting. "I'm sorry. I wish it was otherwise, but that's the
truth. You can try to hike out, or stay at this camp until the food and fuel
runs out. Which is tomorrow. I know it's a terrible inconvenience, but we did
save your lives. What do you say, will you come back with us?"

"The White Horse Inn in Ann Arbor brews a decent stout," Nell offered.

Carl didn't like the prospect of never going home again. But he could
appreciate the benefit of doing something important in the future over being
dead in the present. "Sure, I always wanted to go into space."

Sam asked, "Will that space ship need a pilot?"

*****************************************************

Also Read the sequel: "Special Collection"