The Traveler Read Online Free Page B

be as brutal as Himmler himself.
    â€œStart the signal!” Thomsen cried excitedly.
    The doorway was acting like a centrifuge, so powerful in its rotation that the frightened girl shied away from the forces assaulting her. The technician patted the young girl on the shoulder and then stepped away. Suddenly a burst of sound penetrated the noise from below and held steady.
    â€œTone is sounding and is now in active search mode.”
    Himmler grimaced as the piercing sound of the signal assaulted his ears even through the earplugs. The girl went to her knees as the pain of the signal coupled with the spinning accelerator knocked the senses from her small body.
    â€œWe have signal bounce back! Yes, we have a return!”
    Thomsen smiled as he knew the two doorways were talking to each other. The space between times had been breached.
    â€œThe Jew Einstein was right all along.”
    Thomsen smiled down at Himmler. That Jew, as he called him, was the most brilliant theorist Thomsen had ever studied. Himmler and Hitler were fools for chasing these people off like they had; science would not benefit from their action. He went to the intercom.
    â€œStand!” he said loudly. The girl looked up from her sitting position and back into the glass at the face of the man ordering her to stand. She started to rise but fell back.
    â€œPerhaps you are not strong enough? Your brother perhaps is a better candidate?”
    The girl shot a defiant look up at Thomsen. She angrily raised herself from the floor of the lab. With hatred still burning in her green eyes she finally turned and stared into the swirling bands of color that whirlpooled inside the Wellsian Doorway.
    â€œDisplacement event seven commencing at zero zero thirty-two hours and fifteen seconds. Commence test.”
    After a last defiant look back at the observers, the Traveler looked over at her frightened brother and mouthed the words, “ I’ll come back for you ,” and with that, Moira Mendelsohn stepped into the hurricane force of the doorway.
    *   *   *
    Himmler stood aghast as the girl stepped into the maelstrom of the doorway. He tensed when he saw the young woman stop just beyond the initial frame of the apparatus. Her body was still visible and the Reichsführer could see the frightened girl freeze as the initial force of the Wellsian Doorway snatched her breath away and pulled at the rags of her clothing, sending her ill-fitting dress up and around her thin body.
    *   *   *
    The Traveler felt the closely cropped hair on her head stand straight up. The tattered woolen sweater she wore was pulled so tightly to her skin due to static electricity that her breathing became restricted. Her heart started a rapid palpitation and her stomach was quickly relieved of the thin gruel of potato soup she had been fed earlier. She felt the wetness of her own discarded meal as the heat of the doorway caught and soon evaporated the material. Still, the wind inside the gate increased as the girl forced her body forward with a feeling of weightlessness.
    She felt the sandlike blast of particles as they penetrated her skin and felt the deep burn as they passed through her sinew and bone. Her ears started to bleed and seep from the earphones she wore for protection. The signal from the initiating doorway was so close and strong it ruptured her eardrums. This final test was far more powerful in scope than the previous one.
    The Traveler bent over as the agony of the assault made her feel as if her very bones were being pulverized from the inside. Then she fell forward as the force of the corresponding signal from the target doorway pushed back against the first. The connection between worlds had been made. Moira Mendelsohn, a twelve-year-old from the simple streets of the small Polish village of Triske, now forever known as the Traveler, felt the onrush of the last order to be sent from Germany—full power that was sent