a time before 1999. With ten hours left, Maya is thinking along similar lines. The odds are a billion to one they could have randomly landed on a habitable planet. All Logan's recalculations have indicated their location as Earth. The inescapable conclusion is that they are on Earth—but in a past or future time. Logan reluctantly agrees to pursue this outlandish hypothesis. On the past Earth, Helena's condition is much improved due to the fungoid mixture. As she recovers, Koenig notices their wrist monitors flashing in a specific pattern—Alpha is trying to signal them via the medical telemetry channel. Any chance to respond is lost when a band of soldiers crashes out of the surrounding bushes. Koenig is frustrated at not being able to communicate—then floored when the leader speaks to him in Scots-accented English. The Alphans soon discover their captor is the laird of Clan MacDonald. He is the only clansman who speaks English, having learned it twenty-five years previous as chief castellan for the English prisoners taken at the Battle of Bannockburn. MacDonald reckons they are English noblemen, one of whom is running away with the wife of a great lord. The prisoners are escorted back to his headquarters, this time to a cavern furnished as a great hall, and join MacDonald for a banquet celebrating the impending new year. During the meal, Helena, deprived of her impromptu remedy, begins to relapse. As MacDonald gives a toast in Gaelic to honour the hero Robert Bruce and the Scottish victory at Bannockburn, Koenig and company huddle. They cannot figure the date from MacDonald's clues, but providing Maya and Logan with the information will guarantee the calculation of space/time coordinates for the transfer beam. Koenig begins tapping out a message on the control stud of his wrist monitor. His actions attract the attention of the chieftain, who tears the unfamiliar device off his wrist. As MacDonald reaches for Helena's monitor, she slumps, eyes glazed from sickness. Jumping to conclusions, the alarmed laird backs away and shouts in Gaelic that the English fugitives carry the Black Death. The clansmen herd Koenig and company away at swordpoint. The Alphans are taken to a torture chamber and manacled to the rock wall. Koenig tries to reason with the laird that Helena's illness is not the Plague and can be cured. Knowing only one cure for the pestilence, McDonald heaves his torch into the