Chapter 3: Temporal Crime
Large steel doors opened into the Power Room. Seating themselves in the observation gallery, they looked down on the central area containing the great apparatus that generated the space-time portal or field. Massive spars held in position the more delicate, yet still strong, curving pieces of blue-silver—the famous temporal metal. These were the coupling delimiters, positioned so that they defined a spherical space where the field boundary would appear once the power was turned on.
To one side of this enormous structure was a stage with a lectern. The cadets sat, quivering with excitement, but saying nothing. There was something about the Power Room that stultified conversation. It was like an ancient cathedral, or the OS Senate building.
Carl looked at the cur
