‘From whatever happened to the crew on this assignment.’
‘How do you know something happened?’
He sighed. ‘They’re historians. Something always happens.’
Ranged down each side of the hangar stood two rows of raised plinths. Huge, thick, black cables snaked around them and coiled off into dim recesses. Some plinths were empty; others had small hut-like structures squatting on them. Each was slightly different in size or shape and each one looked like a small, dingy shack, stone-built, flat-roofed with no windows; the sort of structure that could be at home anywhere from Mesopotamian Ur to a modern urban allotment. Prop a rickety, hand-made ladder against a wall and with a broken wheel by the door and a couple of chickens pecking around, they would be invisible.
‘And these are?’ I asked, gesturing.
He smiled for the first time. ‘These are our base of operations. We call them pods. When on assignment, our historians live and work in these. Numbers One and Two.’ He pointed. ‘We usually use them as simulators and for training purposes, because they’re small and basic. Pod Three is due back anytime now. Pod Five is being prepped to go out. Pod Six is out. Pod Eight is also out.’
‘Where are Pods Four and Seven?’
He said quietly, ‘Lost,’ and stood in silence. I could almost hear the dust motes dancing in the quiet shafts of sunlight.
‘When you say “lost,” do you mean you don’t know where they are, or they never came back for some reason?’
‘Either. Or both. Four went to twelfth-century Jerusalem as part of an assignment to document the Crusades. They never reported back and all subsequent rescue attempts failed. Seven jumped to early Roman Britain, St Albans, and we never found them either.’
‘But you looked?’
‘Oh yes, for weeks afterwards. We never leave our people behind. But we never found them, or their pods.’
‘How many people did you lose?’
‘In those two incidents, five historians altogether. Their names are on the Boards in the chapel.’ He saw my look of confusion. ‘They’re our Roll of Honour for those who don’t come back, or die, or both. Our attrition rate is high. Did Dr Bairstow not mention this?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He …’ I was going to ask how high, but a light began flashing over the plinth marked Three. Orange figures appeared from nowhere it seemed, lugging umbilicals, cables, flatbeds and the tools of their trade. And quietly, with no fuss, no fanfare, and certainly no signature tune from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Pod Three materialised on its plinth.
Nothing happened.
I looked up at the Chief. ‘Um …’
‘We don’t go in. They come out.’
‘Why?’
‘They need to decontaminate. You know, plague, smallpox, cholera, that sort of thing. We shouldn’t go in until they do.’
‘But what if they’re injured?’
At that moment, the door opened and a voice shouted, ‘Medic!’
Orange technicians parted like the Red Sea and two apparent medics trotted down the hangar. They disappeared into the pod.
‘What’s happening? Who’s in there?’
‘Number Three? That would be Lower and Baverstock, returning from early 20th-century China, the Boxer Rebellion. It looks as if they require medical attention, but not seriously.’
‘How do you know?’
‘When you’ve seen as many returns as we have then you get a feel for it. They’ll be fine.’
We both stood in silence watching the door until eventually two people, a man and a woman, dressed in oriental clothing, limped out. One had a dressing over one eye and the other’s arm was strapped up. They both looked up at the gantry and waved. The blue people waved and shouted insults. They and the medics headed off. Orange technicians swarmed around the pod.
‘Would you like to have a look?’
‘Yes, please.’
Close up, the pod looked even more anonymous and unimposing than it had been from the other end of the hangar.
‘Door,’ he said and a battered-looking, wooden-looking door swung soundlessly open. After the enormous hangar, the inside of the pod seemed small and constricted.
‘The head and shower room are in there,’ he said, pointing to a partitioned corner. ‘Here we have the controls.’ A console with an incomprehensible array of read-outs, flashing lights, dials, and switches sat beneath a large, wall-mounted screen. The external cameras now showed only a view of the hangar. Two scuffed and uncomfortable looking swivel seats were fixed to the floor in front of the controls.
‘The computer can be operated manually or voice activated if you want someone to talk to. There are lockers around the walls with all the equipment required for your assignment. Sleeping modules here pull out when needed. This pod can sleep up to three reasonably comfortably, four at a push.’
Bunches of cables ran up the walls to disappear into a tiled ceiling.