Tom Fleet was a bit of a misfit as the second son of a minor English noble in the 1880s. Once he finished his schooling he had little to do. His grandfathers had left him adequate finances for his needs and with his elder brother set to take the title, he gave in to his fascination with gadgets and began to tinker and invent. His goal was to create a sky craft to go to the moon. Surely if Jules Verne’s characters could go there and many other places, he could do as well.<br><br>Rowan Farrell followed in his Uncle Gordon’s footsteps, joining the UniFleet, but went a step farther and became an officer. Assigned to his first command level post, he takes a small patrol ship out to scout a region of interest to the Council and report if any signs of the enemy Angevirian Empire in the area. When one of his crew spots a strange, tiny craft, he decides to capture and study it. After all it could be an Angevirian Trojan horse. But the odd cylindrical vessel holds only one man, unconscious and suffering from hypothermia and lack of oxygen. When the man comes to, he claims to come from the earth ... five centuries in the past!

Tom Fleet’s Machine

“Herefordshire is in England, on Old Terra.” Speaking almost as if to himself, the blue-suited man shook his head. “What year is it there, Tom?”


The two uniformed men exchanged a look. The eyebrows of both shot up as a mixture of doubt and surprise crossed their faces. “You gotta be kidding,” Doc muttered.


“If that’s true, I’d have to say your machine worked; you came a long way in both distance and time, Tom. It’s 23:15 standard, and you’re light years away from Old Terra.”


Terror mingled with triumph washed over Tom in a tidal wave. Oh. My. God. “One of us has got to be mad,” he whispered through stiff lips. “I thought I might get to the moon, like in Mr. Verne’s wonderful novel. To travel centuries through time and somewhere across the entire galaxy as well, though? No, that couldn’t happen!”


For a moment, the black nothingness almost sucked him down again. He could not even think about this mad notion. It was too fantastic.3


Chapter 7