Time and Again

thought about that long and hard over the past months. "I was meant for Libby, J.T. You can calculate into the next millennium and that won't change. As much as I love you, I can't leave her and go back."
    In silence, J.T. studied him. He hated most of all that he understood. Weeks before, only weeks, he would have argued, shouted. He would have locked Cal in a cabin and taken off for home without giving him a choice. "Does she love you as much?"
    A ghost of a smile played on Cal's lips. "She never asked me to stay. In fact, she did everything she could to help me prepare for the return trip. She even asked to go with me. She would have given up everything."
    "Instead, you stayed here. You gave up everything."
    "Do you think it was easy for me to make the choice?" Cal demanded. He pushed himself out of the chair, driven by fury and frustration. "It was the hardest thing I've ever done. Damn it, there was no choice. I didn't know if the ship would make it back, and I couldn't risk her life. I was prepared to risk my own, but not hers. If I had left her, I would have been right back in the void again. And I wouldn't have cared."
    Jacob didn't want to understand. But he did. "I've spent two years working on perfecting this time-travel procedure, having this ship designed, fine-tuning all the equations. I'm not saying that more work, more study, isn't necessary, but I made it without any major problems. The success factor is 88.57. Come home, Cal, and bring her with you."
    Cal stared at the viewscreen. He'd learned a great deal over the past year. The most important lesson was that life was not simple. The choices to be made could not be made lightly.
    "There's another piece of data you haven't considered, J.T. Libby's pregnant."

CHAPTER 11
    She didn't speak. In the past thirty minutes, Sunny had gone from believing her sister had a wicked case of sunstroke to wondering if she herself had gone quietly mad without noticing it.
    The twenty-third century. Black holes. Spaceships. Sunny had finally lapsed into silence as Libby had recounted a story about a mission to Mars-dear Lord, Mars-and Cal's fateful encounter with an uncharted black hole, which, through a combination of luck, skill and the mysterious hand of destiny, had shot him backward from the middle of the twenty-third century to the spring of last year.
    The confused Cal, an intergalactic cargo pilot with an affection for flying and poetry, had become a time traveler.
    Time travel.
    Oh, God, she thought. Time travel.
    She remembered clearly the faint smile on Jacob's face when he had told her of his current experiments.
    But that didn't mean-No. She took a steadying breath, determined to control her wandering imagination.
    It had to be some sort of joke. People did not, accidentally or otherwise, zoom through time and fall in love. Jacob was from Philadelphia, she reminded herself as she gulped down brandy. He was a scientist with a bad attitude, and that was all.
    "You don't believe me," Libby said with a sigh. Care and patience, Sunny told herself as she dragged a hand through her hair. Her sister needed care and patience. "Honey, let's just take this slow."
    "You think I'm making it up."
    "I'm not sure what I think." She took a cleansing breath. "Okay, you're trying to tell me that Cal, a former captain in-what was it?"
    "The International Space Force."
    "Right. That he crashed his spaceship in the forest, after being sent through time by an encounter with a black hole."
    She'd hoped that when she said it herself, when Libby heard it repeated, her sister would come out of whatever spell she was in. But Libby just nodded. "That's fairly accurate."
    "Fairly accurate." Sunny tried again. "And now Jacob, going about it through more organized methods, followed the same route so he could visit with his brother."
    "He wants to take him back. I could see it by the way he looked at me."
    The misery on Libby's face had Sunny reaching out a hand. "Cal loves you. Nothing J.T. did or didn't do could change that."
    I
    "No, but- Sunny, can't you see? He didn't pop up here on impulse. He must have worked for months, even years, to find the way. If a man's obsessed with something-"
    "All right," she interrupted. "He didn't pop up here on impulse. For reasons I've never fully understood, he's angry that Cal married you and decided to live in Oregon."
    "Not just Oregon," Libby shot back. "Twentieth-century Oregon."
    "Now, take it slow, honey. I know you're upset,