Time and Again

truth-all of the truth-when we found your plane. I'm holding you to that." She tossed up her head, then froze. "Oh, my God."
    Less than twenty feet ahead she saw a gap in the trees, the break she had spotted from beneath the ridge. Up close it looked as though a huge sickle had sliced through the forest, hewing down a swath of evergreen and undergrowth more than thirty feet wide.
    "But there was no fire." She had to quicken her pace to keep up with Cal. "What could have done all this?"
    "That." When they reached the break, Cal pointed. There, nestling on the rocky, needle-strewn ground, was his ship. Trees, some of them thirty feet high, lay like pickup sticks around it. "Don't go any closer until I check for radiation," Cal warned, but he needn't have bothered. Libby couldn't have moved if she'd wanted to.
    Using his wrist unit, he checked the level and gave a quick nod. "It's well within normal limits. The time warp must have neutralized any excess." He slipped an arm around her shoulders again. "Come on inside.
    I'll show you my etchings."
    Dazed, silent, she went with him. It was huge, as big as a house, and like no plane she had ever seen. A military secret, she told herself. That was why Cal had been so evasive. But surely one man couldn't fly something so large.
    The front was its narrowest point, blunted, somewhat bullet-shaped, before it curved out into the body.
    There were no wings. That thought caused an uneasy lurch in her stomach. It's shape reminded her of a stingray that scuttled across the ocean floor.
    An experiment, she told herself as she climbed over a fallen pine.
    The body was a dull metallic color not glitzy enough to be called silver. There were scrapes and dents and dust all over it. Like an old, reliable family car, she thought giddily.
    The damage had happened in the accident, she decided, but it worried her more than a little that several of the dents looked old. The Pentagon or NASA or whoever had built it would certainly have taken better care of something that had to be worth millions of taxpayer dollars.
    "You came in this thing by yourself," Libby managed when he leaped down the slight slope to run his hand over the side of the ship.
    "Sure." His fingers moved over the metal in an unmistakable caress. "She handles like a dream."
    "Who does it belong to?"
    "It's mine." There was both pleasure and excitement in his eyes when he held up a hand to help her down. "I told you I didn't steal it."
    As a wave of relief passed over him, he spun her in a circle, then kissed her hard on the mouth. Finding the taste alluring, he kept her feet an inch off the ground and lingered over a second kiss.
    "Caleb-" Breathless, dizzy, she pushed away from him.
    "Kissing you's become a habit, Libby." He circled her waist with his hand. "I've always had a hard time breaking habits."
    He was just trying to distract her, she thought. And he was doing an excellent job of it. "Pull yourself together," she ordered. "Now we've found this- thing. You promised me an explanation. We both know very well that nothing like this is owned by a private citizen. Spill it, Hornblower."
    "It is mine," he told her, still grinning. "Or it will be after ten more payments." He pressed a button to open the hatch. Libby's mouth dropped open as a door lifted up silently. "Come on, I'll show you the registration."
    Unable to resist, she walked up the two steps and into the cabin. It was as large as her living room and was dominated by a control panel. There were hundreds of colored buttons and levers in front of two high-backed black seats shaped like scoops. "Have a seat," he said.
    Staying close to the open hatch, she rubbed her arms to ward off a sudden chill. "It's, ah- dark in here."
    "Oh, yeah." Crossing to a panel, he touched a switch. Libby let out a muffled shriek as the front of the craft opened. "I must have hit the shields when I started down."
    She could only stare. Before her were the forest, the distant mountains and the sky. Strong sunlight poured through. You could hardly call it a windshield when it spanned twenty feet.
    "I don't understand." Because she needed to, she moved quickly to one of the chairs and sat. "I don't understand any of this."
    "I felt the same way a couple of days ago." Cal opened a compartment, scanned through some material, then took out a small, shiny card. "This is my pilot's license, Libby. After you read it, take a nice long breath. It might help."
    His picture was in the corner. His grin