It was nearly noon when they selected a case for the laptop and dimensional watch.  Ethan was reluctant to part with the equipment, but he understood that it ought to be preserved as a piece of history.  No one had ever done such a thing before, and Jill said she wondered if her baby brother Devon might still be out there somewhere, only in a world that was not advanced enough for him to escape.

“Isn’t there a way to contact him?”  Ethan wondered as he pulled the dimensional watch from the briefcase.  Jill had explained that she came up with the idea for the dimensional watch by considering how the elders moved around by tapping their wristwatches.  This was a technology no Gaian ever tried before, but it worked, Ethan was happy to say.

“Now there would be, yes.”  Jill answered the question about contacting Devon.  “I can leave a chit with the coordinating committee and contact them if I get stranded somewhere.  Their chit will download the necessary information to pinpoint the exact Earth.  But that is something that has only been developed in the past fifty years, or so.  We could contact ship to ship, or ship to home, of course, but a general wave direct contact person to ship, or to person, or to home never came to mind.  I guess we thought no one would ever be foolish enough to be out there separated from their ship.  Personal tracking did not exist when I was stranded on your Earth, and it certainly did not exist when Devon disappeared nearly two hundred years ago.  An incredibly obvious oversight, I am sure, but no.  There is not any more chance of contacting him than there was to contact me on your world.”

“But the guardians can contact their Gaian, like Kera Ann contacted Lela,” Ethan said

“On a single direct wave only.  It was an oversight.”  Jill spoke sharply, before she took Ethan’s hand and calmed herself.  “No one thought that way until Devon got lost, and then me.”  She changed the subject.  “You know; I was not even supposed to go to your world.  It was not on my route.  I was sidetracked, somehow.  I don’t know how.  Of course, that meant that no one could find me by tracing my route, which is the way they tried to do it, because I was not on my route.  When my ship exploded in the London blitz, though I still cannot understand how that was possible, I got stuck until I could repair the transitional unit.”  She held her hand out and Ethan gave her the watch.

“Sounds like someone wanted you out of the way.”  Manomar suggested the obvious.

Ethan nodded and pointed at Manomar.  “What he said.  Someone has certainly been following us and firing at us, and they might have gotten us, too, if the Elders had not shown up.”

“Yes, that did happen once,” Jill agreed.

“Twice,” Manomar corrected.  “The Elders were first on my world and then on Alexander and deMartin’s world.”

“Yes, twice,” Ethan agreed again as he took the laptop from Manomar and turned it toward Jill.

“Still.”  Jill shook her head.  She touched the laptop, but she did not take it.

“Someone blew up your ship, and I doubt it was the Germans.”  The idea of that was absurd, given the fact that the ship was in another dimension and shielded by screens powerful enough to ward off an atomic blast, or several atomic blasts and then some.

“But who would do such a thing?”  Jill pulled her hand back from the laptop.  “And how could they find me when no one else could?”

“I would guess it was the same person who misdirected you,” Manomar said.

“Exactly,” Ethan agreed again and held out the laptop again.  “The person that misdirected you would be the only person who knew where you were.”

Jill touched the laptop again and pulled her hand back again.  “But that is impossible,” she said.  “The ship was keyed to my person.  No one could enter alternate coordinates, at least not without me knowing.”

“Unless your ship had two keys like Lela’s ship.”  Ethan thought out loud.  Jill’s eyes got big and they heard a voice echo through the room.  It said, “Bingo,” before there was an explosion and fires everywhere.