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"I see you have Sleepy with you today," I commented.
"Sleepy?"
I nodded toward his yawning bodyguard.
"Oh, yes. Well, it was a busy night. We're all feeling the aftereffects."
I looked at Amanda, who offered me a small shrug.
"We were at Parliament," Anderson bizarrely shared. He wasn't usually the sharing type. "The Prime Minister is very excited about our new venture. Things are looking up at RATS."
I didn't quite know what to say to that, but thankfully the emerging rip alarm sounded out overhead. Not a sentence you expect to say often.
"We have a rip, Doctors," Amanda announced. "31st of January, 1966. Star City, the USSR."
My eyes met Dr Bauer's across the room. It had to be Sergei. She looked just as worried as I was feeling right then. Neither of us voiced our concerns, though; this was what we were here to do, after all.
"Star City again?" Mr Anderson asked.
"Yes, sir," Amanda replied, and then to me, she said, "Luna 9. E-6 No. 13. Destined for Oceanus Procellarum on the near side of the moon. The first successful landing of an unmanned spacecraft on a celestial body."
The sine wave on the viewscreen had turned orange.
Bryan chose that moment to saunter into the room without a care in the world.
"Are we flyin'?" he asked no one in particular.
Amanda handed me the coordinates. "Fire up the booster rockets, Dr Fawkes," I said. "We're launching to the moon."
"You're not actually going to the moon, are you?" Anderson asked.
For several heartbeats, we all stared at him and said nothing.
Bryan eventually broke the stunned quiet and slapped him on the shoulder, making Sleepy jolt where he stood and reach for his gun. "As near as we can in 1966, Mr Anderson." He'd clearly seen the date and location on the main viewscreen. "Care to accompany us?"
I didn't think Bryan wanted anyone in the Orion with us, save a Novitiate. But he was hamming up the good ol' boy attitude as much as he could for the good of the team. Bryan knew as well as I how easy it would be for Anderson to clip our wings.
The Chief Overseer rolled his shoulders, dislodging Bryan's hand. Straightening his cuff, he said, "Your overseer and guard will be waiting in the hangar, Dr Fawkes. I suggest you get down there before they fly without you."
It was a hollow threat, I was sure. None of Anderson's support crew knew how to fix a rip, let alone how to fly an MPCV. But neither Bryan nor I were going to risk it.
Bryan offered a casual salute while I nodded my thanks to Amanda, and then we hightailed it out of there.
"Who do you think they assigned to us?" Bryan asked as we made our way to the hangar.
"It'll be one of the Grumpys."
"The Grumpys?"
"Haven't you noticed a decided similarity between our SWAT shadows and the Seven Dwarves?"
"Who's Snow White? Anderson?"
"Why not? He's definitely naïve enough for the role."
"Got a spare apple lying around the place?"
"That was Sleeping Beauty."
