Their flashlights crisscrossed the room, revealing a large, contoured beige console with three high-backed, padded seats. The room was clearly built for human beings.

“Must be the bridge or the cockpit.”

But the curved consoles were completely blank. There was no instrumentation of any kind. And the seats were empty. They swung their beams back and forth in the darkness. “Looks like a mockup, rather than the real thing.”

“It can’t be a mockup.”

“Well, it looks like one.”

Norman ran his hand over the smooth contours of the console. It was nicely molded, pleasant to feel. Norman pressed the surface, felt it bend to his touch. Rubbery again. “Another new material.”

Norman’s flashlight showed a few artifacts. Taped to the far end of the console was a handmarked sign on a three-by-five filing card: It said, “GO BABY GO!” Nearby was a small plastic statuette of a cute animal that looked like a purple squirrel. The base said, “Lucky Lemontina.” Whatever that meant.

“These seats leather?”

“Looks like it.”

“Where are the damned controls?”

Norman continued to poke at the blank console, and suddenly the beige console surface took on depth, and appeared to contain instruments, screens. All the instrumentation was somehow within the surface of the console, like an optical illusion, or a hologram. Norman read the lettering above the instruments: “Pos Thrusters”… “F3 Piston Booster”… “Glider”… “Sieves”…

“More new technology,” Ted said. “Reminiscent of liquid crystals, but far superior. Some kind of advanced optoelectronics.”

Suddenly all the console screens glowed red, and there was a beeping sound. Startled, Norman jumped back; the control panel was coming to life.

“Watch it, everybody!”

A single bright lightning flash of intense white light filled the room, leaving a harsh afterimage.

“Oh God…”

Another flash-and another-and then the ceiling lights came on, evenly illuminating the room. Norman saw startled, frightened faces. He sighed, exhaling slowly. “Jesus…”

“How the hell did that happen?” Barnes said.

“It was me,” Beth said. “I pushed this button.”

“Let’s not go around pushing buttons, if you don’t mind,” Barnes said irritably.

“It was marked ‘ROOM LIGHTS.’ It seemed an appropriate thing to do.”

“Let’s try to stay together on this,” Barnes said.

“Well, Jesus, Hat-”

“Just don’t push any more buttons, Beth!”

They were moving around the cabin, looking at the instrument panel, at the chairs. All of them, that is, all except for Harry. He stood very still in the middle of the room, not moving, and said, “Anybody see a date anywhere?”

“No date.”

“There’s got to be a date,” Harry said, suddenly tense. “And we’ve got to find it. Because this is definitely an American spaceship from the future.”

“What’s it doing here?” Norman asked. “Damned if I know,” Harry said. He shrugged. Norman frowned.

“What’s wrong, Harry?”

“Nothing.”

“Sure?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Norman thought: He’s figured out something, and it bothers him. But he’s not saying what it is.

Ted said, “So this is what a time-travel machine looks like.

“I don’t know,” Barnes said. “If you ask me, this instrument panel looks like it’s for flying, and this room looks like a flight deck.”

Norman thought so, too: everything about the room reminded him of an airplane cockpit. The three chairs for pilot, copilot, navigator. The layout of the instrumentation. This was a machine that flew, he was sure of it. Yet something was odd…

He slipped into one of the contoured chairs. The soft leather-like material was almost too comfortable. He heard a gurgling: water inside?

“I hope you’re not going to fly this sucker,” Ted laughed.

“No, no.”

“What’s that whirring noise?”

The chair gripped him. Norman had an instant of panic, feeling the chair move all around his body, squeezing his shoulders, wrapping around his hips. The leather padding slid around his head, covering his ears, drawing down over his forehead. He was sinking deeper, disappearing inside the chair itself, being swallowed up by it.

“Oh God…”

And then the chair snapped forward, pulling up tight before the control console. And the whirring stopped. Then nothing.

“I think,” Beth said, “that the chair thinks you are going to fly it.”

“Umm,” Norman said, trying to control his breathing, his racing pulse, “I wonder how I get out?”

The only part of his body still free were his hands. He moved his fingers, felt a panel of buttons on the arms of the chair. He pressed one.

The chair slid back, opened like a soft clam, released him. Norman climbed out, and looked back at the imprint of his body, slowly disappearing as the chair whirred and adjusted itself.

Harry poked one of the leather pads experimentally, heard the gurgle. “Water-filled.”

“Makes perfect sense,” Barnes said. “Water’s not compressible. You can withstand enormous G-forces sitting in a chair like this.”

“And the ship itself is built to take great strains,” Ted said. “Maybe time travel is strenuous? Structurally strenuous?”

“Maybe.” Norman was doubtful. “But I think Barnes is right-this is a machine that flew.”

“Perhaps it just looks that way,” Ted said. “After all, we know how to travel in space, but we don’t know how to travel in time. We know that space and time are really aspects of the same thing, space-time. Perhaps you’re required to fly in time just the way you fly in space. Maybe time travel and space travel are more similar than we think now.”

“Aren’t we forgetting something?” Beth said. “Where is everybody? If people flew this thing in either time or space, where are they?”

“Probably somewhere else on the ship.”

“I’m not so sure,” Harry said. “Look at this leather on these seats. It’s brand-new.”

“Maybe it was a new ship.”

“No, I mean really brand-new. This leather doesn’t show any scratches, any cuts, any coffee-cup spills or stains. There is nothing to suggest that these seats have ever been sat in.” “Maybe there wasn’t any crew.”

“Why would you have seats if there wasn’t any crew?”

“Maybe they took the crew out at the last minute. It seems they were worried about radiation. The inner hull’s leadshielded, too.”

“Why should there be radiation associated with time travel?”

“I know,” Ted said. “Maybe the ship got launched by accident. Maybe the ship was on the launch pad and somebody pressed the button before the crew got aboard so the ship took off empty.”

“You mean, oops, wrong button?”

“That’d be a hell of a mistake,” Norman said.

Barnes shook his head. “I’m not buying it. For one thing, a ship this big could never be launched from Earth. It had to be built and assembled in orbit, and launched from space.”

“What do you make of this?” Beth said, pointing to another console near the rear of the flight deck. There was a fourth chair, drawn up close to the console.

The leather was wrapped around a human form.

“No kidding…”

“There’s a man in there?”

“Let’s have a look.” Beth pushed the armrest buttons. The chair whirred back from the console and unwrapped itself. They saw a man, staring forward, his eyes open.

“My God, after all these years, perfectly preserved,” Ted said.

“You would expect that,” Harry said. “Considering he’s a mannequin.”

“But he’s so lifelike-”

“Give our descendants some credit for advances,” Harry said. “They’re half a century ahead of us.” He pushed the mannequin forward, exposing an umbilicus running out the back, at the base of the hips.

“Wires…”

“Not wires,” Ted said. “Glass. Optical cables. This whole ship uses optical technology, and not electronics.”

“In any case, it’s one mystery solved,” Harry said, looking at the dummy. “Obviously this craft was built to be a manned ship, but it was sent out unmanned.”