May 6, 1937

Lakehurst, New Jersey

A naval officer dressed in a dark bridge coat stood to one side of a zeppelin hanger, his face all but invisible within the shadows formed by his coat and hat while piercing gray eyes watched the preparations with keen interest.

To his left, a Chief Petty Officer stood dressed in winter blues. Occasionally, the chief would glance into the hangar to view the blunt nose of the zeppelin Los Angeles hovering in the gloom.

They were waiting for an event.

All the people at the airfield in Lakehurst were waiting for the latest sensation in air travel; the Hindenburg. However, unlike most of the people at the airfield, some men standing strategically about the field were waiting for an event only they knew would happen; an explosion destined to change the course of air technology.

All the dated paraphernalia dotting the field reminded the officer and his men that they were in a foreign time, that they were interlopers in this tragedy.

Looking up into the drizzle the chief surreptitiously checked a holographic sensor mounted at the peak of the arched roof of the hanger while cupping a hand to the brim of his hat. The device was small; the size of an aluminum pop can and virtually unnoticeable by the present-day detection methods. Beyond the hanger peak, gray clouds passed low to the east.

He shifted his gaze to the exterior length of the hanger. The sky to the west was brightening with early evening sunlight slanting through breaks in the overcast. The drizzle abruptly halted and sunlight glinted off the wet buildings, railroad tracks and mooring masts of the airfield.

“For God’s sake Anson, stop looking around like that,” the officer spoke softly, forcefully, with the voice of a man used to command. “You’ll draw attention to us.”

In reply the chief crossed his arms and glared at the officer with ice-blue eyes set above a thin mouth. “Security check,” he whispered with the tone of an order.

Withholding a curse Robert Maxwell ducked his chin lower in his coat and spoke in a whisper, his throat microphone would transmit his words at the proper volume. “All teams; status report, security observations.”

The small receiver fitted in his ear crackled with static followed by replies.

“Team two. Status nominal; sensors two and three test operable on remote and the nearest locals are five zero meters southwest. No approaches.” Maxwell had great hope for Stanley Hawthorn, the leader of team two. Young Stanley had completed his time leap training immediately prior to the beginning of this mission.

Their reports continued with the chief listening to his receiver while scanning the surrounding area. The zeppelin ground handlers were shuffling out of the hangers and buildings bordering the landing field, their uniforms wet from the storm that had moved through the area delaying the Hindenburg. The musty smell of damp earth hung in the air despite the calming wind.

“Time,” Anson demanded.

Maxwell glanced at the Eldritch Control security officer. The Swede was normally a strict observer, never speaking unless a security crisis occurred, yet on this mission the Swede was nervous. Robert negated his voice transmitter. “Calm down Swede. There’s nothing we can do for these people.”

The chief ignored Maxwell then continued his search for signs of paradox.

A tall naval officer, distinguished and proud, strode onto the field shouting orders and organizing the line handlers into two parallel lines under the expected point of arrival. The officer, Charles E. Rosendahl, was the commander of Lakehurst zeppelin activity and one of several people who were subject targets for the holographs. He bellowed at men and moved them with stiff-armed shoves. Good nature grumbling vied with excitement at the sight of the German airship.

Maxwell checked his watch; it was time. The holo-cameras had an hour of data storage capacity, more than enough for this event. “All unit’s record,” he ordered in a whisper then faced the Swede. “It’s seven-oh-two. We are recording.”

Anson nodded once while watching the Hindenburg approach the field. The breath caught in his throat as the airship cleared the clouds. Maxwell was correct; they were intruders on a tragic event, interlopers in time. Up in that beautiful airship were ninety-seven people, passengers and crew, forty-five of whom would die while the rest would suffer burns of varying degrees. The time travelers were here as a morbid audience.

The newsreel cameramen standing atop Ford and Dodge hardtop trucks swiveled their cameras performing their version of twenty-first century recording technology. Herb Morrison stood between the trucks testing his radio equipment as technicians scurried about their tasks. A few civilian visitors dotted the field while many others, perhaps a thousand people, stood at the chain-link fence surrounding the field.

An excitement permeated Lakehurst, like the raised voices and quick movements at a carnival. The smell of diesel fuel and the steady thump of the Hindenburg’s propellers drew the men into the event, an authenticity they could never duplicate for their audiences. Like their fellow occupants of the field, they watched the airship with awe.

The low rumble of Daimler Benz diesel engines grew in volume, the chipping sound of wooden propellers cutting the air as the Hindenburg crossed the landing perimeter formed by the airfield’s outer fence. Six hundred feet above the damp field the giant airship was glowing in the evening light, slowing as it crossed the field with engines quieting to a purr.

Maxwell checked his watch; seven-oh-four.

His memory supplied the hidden details. Captain Pruss would confirm his intention to land, the zeppelin crew running to their landing stations accompanied by the sound of a steam whistle within the airships hull. Passengers lined the Promenade windows waving to the people on the landing field in the moment’s excitement.

Maxwell looked away from the Hindenburg, his heart heavy. Time travel was a useless form of entertainment; they could change nothing, they had to watch as the ship arrived and endure the helplessness of knowing the future. He noticed a sailor walking out of the open doors of the Los Angeles hanger.

There was no time to warn the Swede. With the swagger of a saltwater man the sailor walked directly to Maxwell, stopping at the time traveler’s side to stare up at the Hindenburg and throw a sketchy salute as he spoke.

“Howdy, Lieutenant,” the sailor looked at Maxwell. “A beaut’ isn’t she.”

He guessed the sailor’s age near eighteen. Maxwell took a deep breath and glanced up at the Hindenburg with as much of a smile as he could manage. The airship was over the center of the field displaying huge tail stabilizers with the large black swastikas on a white and red background. Water rained from the airship’s hull as a sudden load of ballast released from the bottom of the zeppelin.

Maxwell’s smile became genuine as the water splashed down on several line handlers to the sounds of shouts and curses. “Yes son,” he replied, “she’s a gem. What do you need?”

“Well, Sir,” the sailor’s face grew serious. “I’ve got a mess of fire gear in the hanger and I don’t know if I should bring it onto the field. What should I do?”

“How long have you been here, son?” Maxwell stalled, as he looked at the Swede in an unspoken question. Where the hell was the fire-fighting equipment prior to the Hindenburg’s explosion? There was a potential for paradox in the sailor’s innocent question. The chief looked away, his expression hard and vindictive. What the hell? Maxwell covered his surprise and anger.

The sailor said something he did not hear as Maxwell thought desperately. He seemed to recall a fire-fighting cart near the base of the Hindenburg’s mooring mast and had to trust his memory of an old film.

He smiled at the sailor. “Sure. Have some men help you get the equipment over to the mooring mast.”

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“Yes, Sir.” The sailor saluted and hurried away, waving at other sailors who had gathered at the Los Angeles hangar.

“That was a mistake,” the Swede observed softly.

“Asshole,” Maxwell did not look at the security officer. “I don’t think the equipment will have much of an effect on a hydrogen fire.”

“What if the firefighter dies?” the Swede’s accent became pronounced in his agitation. “Only one man originally dies on the ground.”

“Go to hell, Swede.” Maxwell growled, remembering the security man’s denial of help.

“I will report this,” Anson snapped.

“You do that,” Maxwell replied while pulling a control deck from his pocket.

The Hindenburg was past the west boundary of the field, traveling at thirty knots while using a water tower as a location for its turn into final approach. It was a majestic sight; sunlight reflecting off the treated fabric of the hull, with shadows shifting and highlighting the internal supports. The ground crews waited in rapt silence, their curses gone and their discomfort temporarily forgotten.

“What’s Morrison doing?” Maxwell asked after activating his microphone.

“Team two,” Stanley’s voice came on line. “We have Morrison in sight. He’s set up and motioning to his men to light up his microphone.”

“Understood; all teams activate sound recording. Ensure your sound dampers are off; we want the full effect on this one.”

To Maxwell’s annoyance, the Swede came on the network. “All teams; condition two alert, we have contact and possible paradox. Avoid contact with time-liners on penalty of Eldritch Control General Order Three.”

“Who screwed up?” Dokins, the leader of team five, asked caustically.

“Not me,” Stanley’s voice came through the circuit as a mumble.

“I did,” Maxwell snapped. “Shut up and get to work. Hawthorn tap into Morrison’s transmission and put it on our circuit.”

“Yes, sir,” came the quick reply.

On the field, the ground personal were reforming their ranks after the disruption of the zeppelin’s passage. Commander Rosendahl strode the length of the lines, adding his imposing presence to the strength of the orders issued by junior officers. Despite a thin layer of wet dirt, their movements were kicking up dust from the dry under-layer.

Shadows were lengthening across the field as the sun approached the horizon. Several sailors dressed in pea coats were moving fire carts loaded with hand pump fire extinguishers to the shadow of the Hindenburg’s mooring mast. Maxwell watched them work and hoped he had made the right decision.

The Hindenburg flew back over the field proper on a southerly heading. Her diesel engines, housed in outboard nacelles, reversed to full astern and rapidly slowed the zeppelin. The airship halted in a position near the mooring mast and the engine noise dropped to an idle growl.

Maxwell glanced at his watch. “All teams zero your holo-cameras for the correct drift. The time is seven-nineteen; six minutes to detonation.”

A voice echoing from the bottom of a tin can whispered in their receivers. “Here it comes, ladies and gentlemen, and what a sight it is, a thrilling one, a marvelous...”

Herb Morrison was beginning his spiel. Morrison’s verbal report was a benchmark for paradox. Each member of the team had memorized the original transmission and checked Herb’s words against their memory. Should their presence disrupt the continuum, there was a sixty-two percent chance it would be reflected in Morrison’s dialogue.

“Check in,” Maxwell ordered as the tension increased. Seven-twenty-one; the fore yaw lines dropped to the ground, uncoiling as they fell more than one hundred feet to land in a puff of dust.

“Team two, conditions nominal...”

Anson listened to the reports with detached interest. He trembled and cast his eyes down to avoid sighting the Hindenburg. For a moment he felt like a God knowing the fate of the people in the airship, knowing the sequence of events but powerless to prevent the carnage. He was not God; he was insubstantial, ineffective.

This was a mission composed entirely of risk for the sake of sensationalism. The Swede felt his own anger justified and the actions of the people in his own time disgusting. What would they view next? The Kennedy assassination in glorious technicolor holographic, complete with the kill shot?

“The sun is striking the windows of the observation deck on the westward side...”

Maxwell pulled his control deck to open view, checking the holo-camera’s field of view on a miniature screen, then making minor adjustments to align the Hindenburg. His shaking hands complicated the procedure. What the hell were they doing here? This was insane. He checked his watch, pulling his coat sleeve back and glancing at the watch twice before the numbers registered in his mind.

Seven-twenty-three.

Ground personnel were performing a dance macabre of precise movement, unaware of the lethal bomb overhead waiting to explode. More spider lines dropped from the zeppelin as a five-man crew pulled the fore yaw lines towards a truck mounted winch. Line handlers gathered the wooden handles of the spider lines and pulled the slack from the cables.

“... and sparkling like glittering jewels on the background of black velvet, the Hindenburg entranced ....

“No discrepancies, no discrepancies,” Maxwell repeated in a litany. “Dear Lord, let there be no paradox.”

Deep inside the tail of the Hindenburg a light flashed, a red and yellow glow coming from cell number five. Hydrogen gas was burning. The crewmen near cell number four jumped down to the catwalk at the base of the lower fin where they lay in a terrified jumble, unable to move.

The fire burned through the cell fabric and atmospheric oxygen mixed with the concentrated hydrogen. The Hindenburg exploded in a massive conflagration.

“Oh, oh, oh...” Morrison shouted.

The film cameras swiveled on their mounts to face the Hindenburg’s stern, the cameramen spinning the exposure handles faster.

Maxwell’s watch changed from seven-twenty-four to seven-twenty-five.

Flames rocketed out of the Hindenburg, reaching into the evening sky. The fire sucked air from within the zeppelin, imploding the aluminum frames with screeches of twisting metal. Her outer skin was burned away, as the flames towered higher and higher. The zeppelin’s stern lost buoyancy and began the plunge to the ground.

In the gondola, Captain Pruss ordered the aft water ballast released, then saw the red glow of advancing flames reflecting off the damp ground. The helmsman at his side groaned.

“It’s burst into flames...” Morrison cried.

Flames raced along the aluminum oxide treated hull fabric, impregnated with what would become a standard rocket fuel in less than a decade.

The ground handlers’ broke ranks and ran for their lives. Arthur Johnson, a police officer standing near the mooring mast, turned and ran for the telephone in the Los Angeles hanger, tripping over a railroad track. He rolled onto his back and saw the enormous ball of fire descending. He was on his feet and running, never knowing how he had achieved the effort, the small man standing near the far end of the zeppelin hanger not even noticed.

“...get out of the way, please! It’s burning, bursting into flames and is falling. Oh!” With his voice breaking, Morrison cried.

“Overload on holo-camera A,” a voice called to Maxwell. Holo-camera A was directly under the Hindenburg’s stern.

“Set to independent control,” Maxwell spoke loudly to be heard over the thunder of the explosion. “Let them detonate on temperature differential.” The tension was suddenly gone. He immersed in the function of his job. The plight of the passengers on the Hindenburg became increasingly unreal, neutral, an event to observe. Immunization or shock, Maxwell did not care as long as the doubt and horror were gone from his mind.

Tears coursed the Swede’s cheeks; he felt so useless. He wanted to run to the airship and help save the passengers. He brutally wiped the tears away.

The drastic loss of lift in the stern of the Hindenburg forced the still intact bow of the zeppelin high into the air. The stern impacted on the ground, all four crewmen in the lower fin escaping through the rent fabric of the ship’s skin as flames billowed towards them. A ground handler tripped on one of the many railroad tracks, and died instantly when the Hindenburg landed on him, his scream lost in the roar.

The flames raced up the tilted zeppelin in a flume effect, the interior of the ship glowing yellow, and the fabric skin burning. The roar of the explosion matched the howl of the wind, screaming with outrage as it sucked into the airship.

High in the bow, five crewmen clung for their lives, staring down into an advancing wall of flame. One attempted to escape using the fore yaw line. As he clung to the rope, a few feet from the bow window, the line parted and crewman Huchel plunged one hundred and fifty feet to land flat on his back, the dust from his impact sucked into the flames. Joseph Liebrecht clung to a stanchion for dear life, enduring searing pain while watching his three friends fall into the mass of flames, their screams small in the holocaust.

As the Hindenburg upended and collapsed down on itself, the deck of the passenger section became untenable. People tumbled to the aft bulkhead of the lounge. Flames scorched through the port windows, turning passengers into human torches. The airship twisted and bucked, preventing any chance of climbing from the pile and escape.

Joseph Spah and two men clung to the lip of a starboard promenade window. He watched helplessly as the other men fell to their deaths; their fingers shredded by the broken glass in the window frames. Despite the pain, he waited, jumping when the heat was unbearable, fell forty feet, rolled and walked away.

Stanley Hawthorn watched Spah walk from under the descending pyre, unable to understand the courage of the man.

“This is one of the worse... oh! It’s a terrific sight... Oh... And all the humanity...” Herb Morrison’s voice broke for the final time, his shoulders bending under the weight of the event, his knees unable to support him. Tears flowed. He could no longer speak, yet his last words encompassed the scale of the tragedy.

In the burning wreckage of the Hindenburg’s stern a small holographic recorder, scoured from the ground by the weight of aluminum gouging the earth, flared and consumed itself in a magnesium fire. Nothing but slag remained of the device.

The fireball soared skyward in a mushroom cloud, heralding a coming nightmare. Pieces of fabric whisked upward in the firestorm. Steam rose from the ground. People ran back into the holocaust to save the victims.

Men leaped from the gondola, Captain Pruss visibly standing outside the windows as the flaming superstructure collapsed around the gondola, driving it into the ground under the weight of the descending bow. The entire fore section convoluted into flames.

Four men walked out of that hell burned and disfigured.

Captain Pruss had survived.

The remaining ground holo-cameras destroyed themselves.

The Swede turned his back on the disaster, placing his hands on the hanger for support, and vomited. Oh God, the screams... he knew what the cries represented.

Shadows lengthened over the field, combating the artificial light of the pyre. Hectic activity centered on the wreckage too late to be of any help to the victims.