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"‘That da Leland Delacroix

"It’s wherever Hodgson went in his spacesuit"

"And wherever he cao nuts, hallucinate everything, kill his fa he saw in his daughter’s throat, in her eye--that was real?"

"Totally"

"Me too Thingsin Hodgson’s suit…could that be what the fluttering is about?"

"Maybe that Maybe soine it

"I got the feeling--wherever the other side is, it’s a real zoo over there"

We returned to the dining room Bobby to the stool Me to the chair by the composition table After a moment of reluctance, I started the tape

By the tied He wasn’t as emotional as he had been His voice broke now and then, and he needed to pause to collect himself fro to soldier through what needed to be said

"In the garage I keep gardening supplies, including a gallon of Spectracide Bug killer I got the can and emptied it on the three bodies I don’t know if thatin them In the bodies, I mean Besides, these aren’t insects Not like we think of insects We don’t even knohat they are Nobody knows Lots of big theories Maybe they’re soasoline out of the car I have a couple gallons here in another can I’ll use the gasoline to start the fire before…before I finishto leave the four of us for overeducated janitors at Project Control They’ll just do so us and do autopsies And spread this dao down to the corner and mail this tape to you, before I set the fire and…kill ht now Very quiet inside For no long? I want to believe that--"

Delacroix halted infor so, and then shut off the recorder

I stopped the tape "He didn’t ed hismetaphysical?"

"That was my next question," I said

When Delacroix returned to the recorder, his voice was heavier, slower, leaden, as though he had fallen past fear, dropped below grief, and was speaking fro in one of the bedrooination The bodies are…where I left theination And now I realize you don’t even knohat this is about I started this all wrong There’s soto be able to blow this wide open, but there’s so little tiot to know, the bones of it, is that there was a secret project at Fort Wyvern The code na athehtmare Train would have been a better name for it Hellbound Train--that would’ve been better yet And me happy to climb on board with the rest of’e brother Not me So…here are the key personnel Not everyone Just the ones I knew, or as ht now Several are dead Many are alive Maybe one of the living will talk, one of the upper-tier bastards ould know a lot more than I do They all uilty consciences You’re good at finding the whistle-blowers"

Delacroix proceeded to list over thirty people, identifying each man or woman as either a civilian scientist or a military officer: Dr Randolph Josephson, Dr Sarabjit Sanathra, Dr Miles Bennell, General Deke Kettlenized only two nason, as no doubt the poor devil we encountered in the bizarre episode in the egg rooer Stanho lived with his wife, Marie, on my street, just seven houses east of mine Dr Stanwyk, a biocheues, associated with the genetic experiments at Wyvern If the Mystery Train wasn’t the project that grew fro more than one paycheck and had done more than his fair share to destroy the world

Delacroix’s voice grew softer and his speech slower during recitation of the last six or eight nah it would stick to his tongue and remain unrevealed I wasn’t sure if he had reached the end of his list or had stopped without finishing it

He was silent for half a ized, he rattled out what seee before switching off the recorder

I stopped the tape and looked at Bobby "What was that?"

"Wasn’t pig Latin"

I reversed the tape, and we listened again

This wasn’t any language I could identify, and though, for all I knew, Delacroix ibberish, I was convinced that it had h no as recognizable, I found it curiously familiar

After the thick, slow, depressed voice in which Delacroix had recited the names of people involved in the Mystery Train project, he imbued these sentences with evident emotion, perhaps even passion, which see with purpose and ious joy, who speak in tongues, also exhibit great eues they speak

When Leland Delacroix began to record again, his voice revealed a nuerous depression: so flat as to be virtually devoid of inflection, so soft that it was barely more than a whisper, the essence of hopelessness

"There’s no point in e what’s happened There’s no going back Everything’s out of balance now Veils ripped Realities intersecting"

Delacroix fell silent, and there was only the faint background hiss and pop of the tape

Veils ripped Realities intersecting

I glanced at Bobby He seemed as clueless as I was

"Temporal relocator That’s what they called it"

I looked at Bobby again, and he said, with grih, instru but ument was for a far future terminus, a lot farther than anyone expected How far forward these packages went, no one could say or wanted to guess Videocams were included in later tests, but when they came back, the tape counters were still at zero Maybe they taped…then, coot visuals The instrue was supposed to beup on soe itself didn’t move, but the videocae of sky, fraht hours of tape, back and forth, eight hours and not one cloud The sky was red Not streaky red like a sky at sunset An even shade of red, as the sky we know is an even shade of blue, but with no increase or diht hours"