"No date."
"There's got to be a date," Harry said, suddenly tense. "And we've got to find it. Because this is definitely an American spaceship from the future."
"What's it doing here?" Norman asked. "Damned if I know," Harry said. He shrugged. Norman frowned.
"What's wrong, Harry?"
"Nothing."
"Sure?"
"Yeah, sure."
Norman thought: He's figured out something, and it bothers him. But he's not saying what it is.
Ted said, "So this is what a time-travel machine looks like.
"I don't know," Barnes said. "If you ask me, this instrument panel looks like it's for flying, and this room looks like a flight deck."
Norman thought so, too: everything about the room reminded him of an airplane cockpit. The three chairs for pilot, copilot, navigator. The layout of the instrumentation. This was a machine that flew, he was sure of it. Yet something was odd. ...
He slipped into one of the contoured chairs. The soft leather-like material was almost too comfortable. He heard a gurgling: water inside?
"I hope you're not going to fly this sucker," Ted laughed.
"No, no."
"What's that whirring noise?"
The chair gripped him. Norman had an instant of panic, feeling the chair move all around his body, squeezing his shoulders, wrapping around his hips. The leather padding slid around his head, covering his ears, drawing down over his forehead. He was sinking deeper, disappearing inside the chair itself, being swallowed up by it.
"Oh God ..."
And then the chair snapped forward, pulling up tight before the control console. And the whirring stopped. Then nothing.
"I think," Beth said, "that the chair thinks you are going to fly it."
"Umm," Norman said, trying to control his breathing, his racing pulse, "I wonder how I get out?"
The only part of his body still free were his hands. He moved his fingers, felt a panel of buttons on the arms of the chair. He pressed one.
The chair slid back, opened like a soft clam, released him. Norman climbed out, and looked back at the imprint of his body, slowly disappearing as the chair whirred and adjusted itself.
Harry poked one of the leather pads experimentally, heard the gurgle. "Water-filled."
"Makes perfect sense," Barnes said. "Water's not compressible. You can withstand enormous G-forces sitting in a chair like this."
"And the ship itself is built to take great strains," Ted said. "Maybe time travel is strenuous? Structurally strenuous?"
"Maybe." Norman was doubtful. "But I think Barnes is right - this is a machine that flew."
"Perhaps it just looks that way," Ted said. "After all, we know how to travel in space, but we don't know how to travel in time. We know that space and time are really aspects of the same thing, space-time. Perhaps you're required to fly in time just the way you fly in space. Maybe time travel and space travel are more similar than we think now."
"Aren't we forgetting something?" Beth said. "Where is everybody? If people flew this thing in either time or space, where are they?"
"Probably somewhere else on the ship."
"I'm not so sure," Harry said. "Look at this leather on these seats. It's brand-new."
"Maybe it was a new ship."
"No, I mean really brand-new. This leather doesn't show any scratches, any cuts, any coffee-cup spills or stains. There is nothing to suggest that these seats have ever been sat in." "Maybe there wasn't any crew."
"Why would you have seats if there wasn't any crew?"
"Maybe they took the crew out at the last minute. It seems they were worried about radiation. The inner hull's leadshielded, too."
"Why should there be radiation associated with time travel?"
"I know," Ted said. "Maybe the ship got launched by accident. Maybe the ship was on the launch pad and somebody pressed the button before the crew got aboard so the ship took off empty."
"You mean, oops, wrong button?"
"That'd be a hell of a mistake," Norman said.
Barnes shook his head. "I'm not buying it. For one thing, a ship this big could never be launched from Earth. It had to be built and assembled in orbit, and launched from space."
"What do you make of this?" Beth said, pointing to another console near the rear of the flight deck. There was a fourth chair, drawn up close to the console.
The leather was wrapped around a human form.
"No kidding..."
"There's a man in there?"
"Let's have a look." Beth pushed the armrest buttons. The chair whirred back from the console and unwrapped itself. They saw a man, staring forward, his eyes open.
"My God, after all these years, perfectly preserved," Ted said.
"You would expect that," Harry said. "Considering he's a mannequin."
"But he's so lifelike - "
"Give our descendants some credit for advances," Harry said. "They're half a century ahead of us." He pushed the mannequin forward, exposing an umbilicus running out the back, at the base of the hips.
"Wires ..."
"Not wires," Ted said. "Glass. Optical cables. This whole ship uses optical technology, and not electronics."
"In any case, it's one mystery solved," Harry said, looking at the dummy. "Obviously this craft was built to be a manned ship, but it was sent out unmanned."
"Why?"
"Probably the intended voyage was too dangerous. They sent an unmanned vessel first, before they sent a manned vessel."