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“It would be better if we could secure it here and now,” Robert said, with geek-like care.

It was really cute. And possibly impossible.

“Can we try?” he added.

When he asked like that and looked like that? Emily gave a shrug that might have a nod in it.

“We’ll need Uncle E’s tools.” Her big stuff wasn’t readily accessible and they needed to hurry. Besides, no way was she leaving this thing. Her bug was not disappearing into plausible deniability if she could stop it.

Carey and Fyn turned to comply without comment, or obvious urging from Ric not-Jones. It should have pained her to have them disassemble the exhibit with careless disregard, but no one had cared what it looked like since her grandma died and it could be reassembled later. This was about more than an exhibit. She didn’t have to ask to know that they’d arrived driven by more than curiosity. They’d known things, but none of those things included the big red ball or the anomaly. So what was more interesting than those two things? What was more interesting than the ability to hurl this huge metal bug across the country?

She touched the EAD with the tip of a finger. “Might be that all you need is this to keep it here. Or get it somewhere else.”

He frowned with geeky ferocity. Even that was cute. How fair was that?

“It is a concern.”

A concern? That should be the good news, shouldn’t it?

“Are you saying that whoever has that can summon the machine wherever they want?” Ric not-Jones sounded not happy when he should have been delighted. He exchanged worried looks with Carey. Seemed he didn’t do delighted—unless they weren’t the only ones after her bug. The plot wasn’t just thickening, it was turning solid.

“Not just anywhere,” Emily pointed out. “There have to be physical limits—” The looks on all the faces but Fyn’s stopped her. Where did they believe this thing had come from? No, the question was where did they
know
it had come from? They’d been shocked to see the bug arrive, but not
surprised
by the
reality
of the bug. They hadn’t known the EAD device could summon it. So what did they know? It was getting hard not to ask. This would be a good time to do so.

She shrugged out of her jacket—it was hot in the engine room, though the heat had followed her out, so it could be because of Robert and not the engine—and tossed it on the chair. Four sudden and loud inhaled male-type breaths paused her progress. She looked at the four men, caught them looking at her corset and bare midriff. She wasn’t surprised. She got the same reaction from the geeks at ComicCon. Bare skin trumped crazy every time. What did surprise her was how much she liked Robert eyeing her bare tummy. It seemed her feminist inclinations didn’t go as deep as she thought they did. Of course some of her friends thought the corset negated her feminist creds, so they might be in the shallow side anyway. In her opinion, making guys swallow their tongues was way more fun than burning a bra and it didn’t bring gravity to bare on the girls.

She gathered up a few of the tools and headed for steam zero. Robert followed, also bearing tools. Inside, she pulled on her goggles and turned on the heat sensing function. She’d built the goggles, using some high tech binoculars she got online. She’d been offered piles of money for them at their last steampunk convention and was working on some to sell at the next one. They came in useful when dealing with a hot engine. And they made everything look totally cool.

Robert stood quietly at her side, though she got the impression he looked at her, not the machine. If he looked, did he only see the corset and skin? Could he see more? Something to like? She didn’t check. Suck to be wrong and find out she had an overactive imagination. This way she could believe what she wanted.

Because he expected it, she directed most of her attention to the bug’s engine. It hadn’t changed from the last time she’d stared at it. It was hot, the red ball super hot. It should have fried their lungs to be this close, but it didn’t. Bad time to wish she had a Geiger counter. Hard to plan ahead for a need you didn’t know you’d have. Heat scored the seams of the machine, too—she paced around to the anomaly side—that didn’t show a heat signature. She extracted a screwdriver from a pocket of her overalls and eased it toward the anomaly. About six inches out the end disappeared. When she pulled it out, the end didn’t reappear. That was kind of terrifying. Another inch and she might have left the end of her thumb in there. Good thing she hadn’t used one of Uncle E’s tools to check it out. Bad form to probe anomalies with antique tools.

She showed Robert the altered tool. Would have been nice if she could have added something witty to the demo, but her brain played dumb.

Robert’s hand clasped hers as he examined the missing end, increasing her dumb factor by something big. The edge was as smooth as glass and it had a heat signature, though it cooled rapidly once out of the anomaly.

“Interesting.”

Emily realized he showed a heat signature, too. She was still wearing the goggles. Probably looked like a frog or something equally google-eyed. She yanked off the goggles and stared at Robert staring at the screwdriver. Despite her…uneasiness with the machine’s enhancements, a different kind of heat built in the small space, the guy-girl kind of heat, though it was more warm than heated at this point. A nice heat like a July day or a campfire on a cold night. A safe heat, though she had a feeling the unsafe kind simmered below her surface. She wasn’t sure what bubbled under his surface. But a girl could hope.

“There’s a lot of heat moving through the machine,” she said, sounding a bit breathy. She looked around and realized the insides of the engine room showed signs of scorching. Streaks of black in random patterns, some top to bottom, a couple side to side. Was there a pattern in it? She rubbed one, picking up a little carbon in the process.

“Heat?” He sounded a bit hoarse.

She held out the goggles. “And look at the scorch marks on the walls.”

He took them, his hand brushing against hers for too short a time. With a slight smile that had overtones of shy, he eased the goggles on, his movements a mix of assured and tentative, as if he found the experience both familiar and strange.

“What…oh.” His chin moved, lifting and lowering as he found the hot spots. He pulled the goggles off, his cute frown back. “Why isn’t the anomaly hot?”

Emily was pretty sure it was a rhetorical question, since he was the geek, not her. She waited without speaking, watching the expressions pass across his face. There were a lot to see. He appeared to have a lot on his mind. Be nice if she were in the mix. She tipped her head. He’d be taken for a bit stern if she didn’t look at his eyes. They were kind of…innocent. She liked looking in his eyes, even if they weren’t looking at her. And then they were looking at her and she saw plenty of heat simmering below his surface, enough to run the bowling alley for a long time. She kept expecting him to lean in and make a play, because that’s what guys did when they looked like that, only he didn’t lean. He looked.

And looked some more.

Maybe he needed more encouragement. Or she needed to back off. She considered her options. At some point they were going to be at odds. She wanted the bug. He wanted the bug, but for now they were allied. And she wanted the kiss. She leaned. The flames went higher but he still didn’t match her lean. Okay, he was a geek, a cute geek, but still a geek. The basic lean might be too subtle of an approach, though the ones she’d met at steampunk conventions were well versed in the basic lean—so well versed they saw leaning when no leaning was involved. Maybe he needed an advanced lean. She tried it. Now his breath mingled with hers and she saw dark blue specks mix with the light blue in his abruptly widened eyes, the pupils dilating in a most satisfying manner.

No question he was interested. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he didn’t know what to do. Or he needed encouragement on the level of skywriting. She didn’t have a plane or sky. She did have her lips. She leaned until the tiniest of gaps separated them. If instinct didn’t take over she couldn’t help him—

His arms clamped around her. There might have been yanking. It happened fast, so it was hard to know all the little details when his lips pressed against hers with satisfying, if belated, enthusiasm. He’d moved with too much speed for her to get her arms around him and she didn’t want to discourage him by appearing to struggle against his hold, so she let her lips do the reciprocating, while her arms wished they were clamping, too. She might not get another chance. He’d move on to whatever it was he did and she’d found her world famous museum…

Her ruminations faded as sensation built. At first, he seemed a bit inexperienced, but then something changed—for the better, not that he’d been bad. Maybe kissing had as much to do with right time, right guy, as experience. Or he was a fast learner. The faster he learned, the fuzzier her thoughts got. If her mouth had been free, she might even have asked a question. Or three. How? Why? When? The questions guys hated girls asking. But her mouth wasn’t free, didn’t look like it would be free for a while—

The Earth moved. Or maybe it shifted. And tilted. A sizzle like electricity kicked up the hairs on the back of her neck and her arms. He stiffened, his mouth still against hers, but she’d lost him. She felt it before he eased her back.

“Excuse me.”

And he was gone. She blinked. She knew he’d leave, just not mid-kiss. The earth moved and he leaves—the earth shifted again. More electricity sizzle. So maybe they hadn’t made the Earth move. If the bug was acting up, there was no sign of it here in the engine room. It still hissed sullenly. Then she heard shots. Gunshots. Couldn’t be from Wyoming and not recognize the sound of a gun going off, but there was another sound she didn’t recognize.

Emily balanced caution with curiosity for several seconds. It shouldn’t when gunshots were involved, but curiosity won. It usually did. She scrambled up and headed for the parlor.

TWELVE

Smith rode the time slip, releasing a disrupter back along his six, so it would go off just before he dropped back into real time. Not that he thought anyone was following him. The Time Service’s resources had been reduced to inexperienced cadets who were even now heading for time snares. But he hadn’t survived by assuming anything, and time was tricky, with the past, present and future bumping against each other. The current was rough, both ahead and behind. Good thing he knew how to avoid the worst of the turbulence. And he had a strong stomach. He didn’t understand, or control, the gear that sent him through time. Didn’t understand time theory and never would, but he’d learned it was easier to track things not human. This particular energy source was one of the easier mineral compounds to key on. It allowed—not pinpoint accuracy—but as close as it got in the time stream. Even here he was at the mercy of someone else. His life would be easier—and less painful—if time travel were simpler. Maybe time could be pinpointed with more accuracy when limited to a single planet. He didn’t know if that were true or not, but he did know when one threw in multiple galaxies and time lines, time was a bitch. It fought interference as if it knew. Sometimes it felt sentient, as if it wanted to make his existence miserable, too.

He was a soldier, a do-it-yesterday guy. A fixer, not a creator of problems, certainly not meant to be a time traveler. Only the master saw the big picture, knew what all the little moves meant in that picture. He slowed, shuddering as the stream fought that, too. He was weapons ready when he slammed back into real time—

* * * *

Robert felt the shift from the inside out. Felt lethal come online, like a panther uncoiling for the hunt as he stalked for the bug’s exit hatch. The feeling was heady and strange, though his libido was whining about the kiss ending.

“You’re outnumbered. We’re only here for the machine. Surrender and no one will be harmed.”

Robert frowned. Who was that? And where had he come from?

“Outnumbered?” Carey’s voice came from behind the open hatch. Robert saw his legs pressed against the side of the bug through the hatch opening. “This is an opportunity to excel, Smith.”

Smith
. Carey meant the name to be a message to his companions. The time traveling professor had arrived sooner than expected. Carey leaned out and fired off a couple of shots toward the rear of the museum.

Smith’s mercenaries responded with ray gun blasts that made light dance against the walls of the museum. Had he followed the paper trail or the energy trail? If he was tracking the energy output, that could be a problem.
Another opportunity to excel.
He edged up to the opening, wondering in a distant way why he felt no fear, and took a quick look. He leaned back.
I did not see what it looked like I saw.
The mercs, who were using Twitchet’s desk and a couple of workbenches for cover, had looked like robots or something. He leaned out again, risking a longer look, pulling back just before he took a ray blast to the side of the head.
Yup, looked a lot like robots.

Automatons perhaps?
The nanites sounded way too happy, too hopeful they were right—not that it surprised him. After centuries stuck in test tubes the nanites were interested in anything and everything, no matter how dangerous. Apparently that now included the steampunk subculture. Could his team hold out against Smith and his automatons?

Large, metal men could have an advantage in a firefight.

One more look, this time at Smith and he got his second shock. Smith wore a WWII army uniform.
He didn’t know the bug was traveling through time
.
He thought it was still in 1944.
It felt important, though why wasn’t clear. And Robert had other, more urgent concerns.

Robert’s side had the bug for cover. It was well armored but, as more shots thudded into its sides, Robert felt a change ripple through the metal floor. He dropped down close to the opening, but kept out of sight.
Don’t get shot.
He felt the memory of pain from one that hadn’t happened to him and realized the desire not to get shot came from more than natural caution. He really needed to have a sit down with his little sister after this got sorted. But that was for later. Right now he had to keep Smith from getting the bug.