Time and Again

there were some precautions to take.
    Moving from the flight deck to his personal quarters, Jacob stripped off his flight suit. The denim jeans and cotton sweater that had cost him more than he cared to remember were still in their plastic holder.
    Excellent reproductions, he thought as he tugged the jeans over his long legs. And, to give the devil his due, extremely comfortable.
    When he was dressed, he studied himself in the mirror. If he ran into any inhabitants during his stay-a brief one, he hoped-he wanted to blend in. He had neither the time nor the inclination to attempt to explain himself to a people who were most assuredly slow-witted. Nor did he want any of the media coverage that was so popular in this time.
    Though he hated to admit it, the gray sweater and the blue jeans suited him. The fit was excellent, and the material was smooth against his skin. Most importantly, in them he looked like a twentieth century man.
    His dark hair nearly skimmed his shoulders. It was thick, and it was always disheveled, as he paid more attention to his work than to hairstyles. Still, it was an excellent frame for his angular face. His brows were often drawn together over dark green eyes, and his mouth, usually grim when he was poring over calculations, had an unexpected and powerful charm when he relaxed enough to smile.
    He wasn't smiling now. He slung his bag over his shoulder and left the ship.
    Depending on the slant of the sun rather than on his watch, Jacob decided it was just past noon. The sky was miraculously empty. It was incredible to stand under the hard blue cup and see only the faint white trail of what he assumed was the vapor trail from an old continental transport. They called them planes, he remembered, watching the stream lengthen.
    How patient they must be, he mused, to sit cheerfully, shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of other people, hanging in the sky for hours just to get from one coast to another or from New York to Paris.
    Then again, they didn't know any better.
    Switching his gaze from sky to earth, he began to walk.
    It was fortunate that the sun was bright. His preparations hadn't included a coat or any heavy outerwear.
    The snow beneath his boots was soft, but there was just enough of a wind to make the air uncomfortable until the hike warmed his muscles.
    He was a scientist by vocation, and he could lose himself for hours, even days, in equations and experiments. But it wouldn't have occurred to him to neglect his body, either-it was as well toned and as disciplined as his mind.
    He used his wrist unit to give him the bearings. At least Cal's report had been fairly specific as to where his ship had gone down and where the cabin he had stayed in when he had met this Libby was situated.
    Nearly three hundred years in the future, Jacob had visited the spot and had excavated the time capsule that his brother and the woman had buried.
    Jacob had left home in the year 2255. He had traveled through time and through space to find his brother. And to take him home.
    As he walked he saw no signs of man, or of the posh resorts that would populate this area in another century or two. There was simply space, acres of it, untrampled and untouched. The sun cast blue shadows on the snow, and the trees towered, silent giants overhead.
    Despite the logic of what he had done, the months of precise calculations, the careful working of theory into fact, he found himself chilled. The enormity of what he had achieved, where he had gone, struck him.
    He was standing on the ground, beneath the sky, of a planet that was more foreign to him than the moon.
    He was filling his lungs with air. He could watch it expel in white streams. He could feel the cold on his face and his ungloved hands. He could smell the pine and taste the crisp, clear air as it blew around him.
    And he had yet to be born.
    Had it been the same for his brother? No, Jacob thought, there would have been no elation, not at first.
    Cal had been lost, injured, confused. He hadn't set out to come here, but had been a victim of fate and circumstance. Then, vulnerable and alone, he had been bewitched by a woman. Expression grim, Jacob continued to hike.
    Pausing at the stream, he remembered. A little more than two years ago-and centuries in the future-he had stood here. It had been high summer, and though the stream had changed its course over time this spot had been very much the same.
    There had been grass rather than snow under his feet. But the