Time and Again

hissed at him, he decided to try again, once more, calmly. "Libby, everything I told you is true."
    "Stop it." If she hadn't needed both hands on the wheel, she might have slapped him. "I wish I'd never seen you. You literally fall into my life and make me care about you, make me feel things I've never felt before, and all you do is lie."
    He saw only one option. On impulse, he reached out and turned off the key. The Land Rover bumped to a stop. "Now listen to me." With his free hand, he grabbed her sweater and yanked her around.
    "Damn it." The oath came out as a murmur when he saw her face. "Don't cry. I can't stand it."
    "I'm not crying." She wiped angry tears away with the backs of her hands. "Give me back the key."
    "In a minute." He released her, holding his hand palm out in a gesture of truce. "I wasn't lying when I said I was leaving this morning because I thought it was best for you."
    She believed him. And she hated herself because he could so easily make her believe. "Will you tell me what kind of trouble you're in?"
    "Yes." Because he couldn't resist, he trailed a fingertip across her damp cheek. "After we've found the-where I went down-I'll tell you anything you want to know."
    "No more evasions or ridiculous stories?"
    "I'll tell you everything." He lifted her hand, then pressed his palm to hers. "You have my word.
    Libby-" He linked his fingers with hers. "What do I make you feel?"
    She drew her hand away to grip the wheel. "I don't know, and I don't want to think about it."
    "I'd like you to know that I've never had the same feelings for another woman as I have for you. I wish things could be different."
    He was already saying goodbye, she realized. A rippling ache spread in her chest. "Don't. Let's just concentrate on what needs to be done." While she stared straight ahead, he slipped the key back into the ignition. "You were right up there," she told him as she switched it on. "At the curve. The best I could say is that you were coming from that direction. I got the impression when I saw you crash that you went down along that ridge somewhere." With a frown, she lifted a hand to shield her eyes. "Strange- it looks like there's a break in that bank of trees up there."
    Not strange, Cal thought, when you considered that a ship over seventy meters long and thirty across had come down in them. "Why don't we take a look?"
    Libby turned off the road and started up the rocky slope. The part of her that was still annoyed hoped the jostling ride gave Cal the willies. But when she glanced at him, he was grinning.
    "This is great!" he shouted. "I haven't done anything like this since I was a kid."
    "Glad you're having fun." She turned her attention back to driving and didn't notice when Cal pushed a series of buttons on his watch. Excitement began to drum in him as he studied the directional beam on one of the dials.
    "Twenty-five degrees north."
    "What?"
    "That way." He used his other hand to gesture with. "It's that way. Two point five kilometers."
    "How do you know?" He sent her a brilliant smile. "Trust me." They climbed the ridge to where the line of pines thickened. The scattered dogwoods were budded but not yet ready to bloom. Libby shivered once in the cool air before she shut the engine off. "I can't drive through this. We'll have to walk."
    "It's not far." He was already out and offering an impatient hand. "A few hundred meters."
    She kept her hand at her side as she stared at his watch. It was sending out a low, regular beep. "Why is it doing that?"
    "It's scanning. It only has a range of ten kilometers, but it's fairly accurate." Holding his wrist out, he moved in a slow circle. "Since I doubt there's anything metallic as big as my ship around here, I'd say we've found it."
    "Don't start that again." Libby pushed her hands into her pockets and started to walk.
    "You're supposed to be a scientist," Cal reminded her as he fell into step beside her.
    "I am a scientist," she muttered, "which is why I know that men do not bounce off black holes and drop into the Klamath Mountains on the way back from Mars."
    He slung a friendly arm around her shoulders. "You're looking behind you, Libby, not ahead. You've never seen anyone who lived two centuries ago, but you know they existed. Why is it so difficult to believe that they exist two centuries in the future?"
    "I hope they will, but I don't expect to offer them coffee." He wasn't crazy, she decided, but he was clever. "You told me you'd tell me the