Kirov III-Pacific Storm (Kirov Series) Read Free Page A

correct. The man was Russian. His crew
was Russian, and I am led to believe that his ship was Russian built as well.”
    “Another impossibility,” said Turing,
“at least at present. The existing Soviet Union could not build anything like
that ship.”
    “Quite so, but no
more confounding than what you have just suggested, Professor. A ship moving in
time? Funny thing is this…The man disavowed any affiliation with Stalin and the
Soviet Union. In fact he was quite pointed about it—claimed Stalin would not
have the slightest inkling that his ship even existed. Yet he knew of
Churchill’s meeting, at that very moment, in the Kremlin. That was most
revealing. Very few people knew of that arrangement, even in the highest
circles here, yet he spoke about it as if… well as if it were—”
    “As if it were history,” Turing cut
in, a gleam in his eye.
    “Exactly!” Tovey had hold of the teacup
now, and there was nothing more to do with it but drink. “In fact he spoke of
the war, our ‘world war’ as he called it, as if it were history as well. When I
pressed him with the fact that Russia was our ally and asked him to throw in
with us, he said something very odd—that Russia was our ally for the moment .
He told me things change, hinting that arrangement might not be stable. At
first I took that as a warning that Stalin may be ready to switch sides and
join Hitler. Perhaps this man and his ship were the vanguard of that decision.
But Churchill has come to some very different conclusions after his meeting in
Moscow.”
    “I think we can safely keep Russia on
our side of the fence for the time being,” said Turing. “But who knows how this
war ends, sir? Who knows what the world will look like ten years from now,
twenty years, fifty?”
    “This man seemed to think he knew,”
said Tovey. “I pressed him on his port of origin, yet he would say nothing,
even suggesting the question was dangerous to ask. At one point he gestured to
the fortifications above us on the cliff and asked me how I might explain my
battle fleet to the Moors that built them. Then he said he could no more
explain his presence here in a way I could comprehend, and that he was just
trying to get his ship home again, wherever that was. Believe me, all I could
think of at that point was this Captain Nemo.”
    Turing smiled. “There was more to that
than you might think, sir. Nemo may be a good image for this man, though it
doesn’t sound as though he was vengeful.”
    “Quite the contrary,” said Tovey,
scratching the back of his head. “He seemed most accommodating, very sincere. I
wanted to believe everything he told me. Well, that bit about the Moors… I
thought about it for some time. It was as if the man was suggesting he had come
from some far future.”
    Turing sighed, greatly relieved. “That
is, in point of fact, what I am now suggesting,” he said with confidence.
“Consider it, Admiral. His ship is a marvel of engineering, highly advanced, so
powerful that it held the whole Royal Navy at bay in the Atlantic, not to
mention the American fleet as well. It sees us before we know it is even there,
and it flings weapons at us we won’t be able to manufacture or deploy for
decades—yes, decades . It used a working atomic weapon of enormous power,
something we all know is in development, but not nearly ready for deployment.
Yes, that’s very hush, hush, but things do get around in the circles I
frequent. The real point is this: something like that would take the resources
of a major power to design and build, and yet if any nation tried it, we would
surely know about it. I was very pointed in telling you that earlier, hoping to
jog your thinking along these very lines. You see… none of this made sense when
we assumed this ship came from our world, from the here and now reality of this
war. Yet it paints an entirely different picture when we make a different
assumption—that this ship was built in the future —yes, built by