Sunset of the Gods - By Steve White Page 0,2

as to the date of the Trojan War. It is pretty generally agreed that Eratosthenes’ dating of 1184 b.c. is worthless, based as it was on an arbitrary length assigned to the generations in the genealogies of the Dorian royal families of Sparta. On the other hand—”

“Kyle. . . .”

“—the Parian Marble gave a precise date of June 5, 1209 b.c. for the sack, but it was based on astronomical computations which were even more questionable. Other calculations—”

“Kyle.”

“—were as early as 1334 b.c. in Doulis of Samos, or as late as 1135 b.c. in Ephorus, whereas—”

“KYLE!”

“Oh . . . yes, where was I? Well, suffice it to say that even the Classical Greeks couldn’t agree on the date, and modern scholarship has done no better. Estimates range from 1250 to 1180 b.c., and are therefore effectively useless for our purposes. The same problem applies to the voyage of the Argonauts, the war of the Seven against Thebes, and other events remembered in the Greek myths. And, to repeat, the gods tended not to put in appearances in the full light of history. There is one exception, however.” Rutherford paused portentously. “The Battle of Marathon.”

“Huh?” All at once, Jason’s interest awoke. It momentarily took his mind off the irritation he felt, as usual, around Rutherford. “You mean the one where the Athenians defeated the Persians? But that was much later—490 b.c., wasn’t it?”

“August or September of 490 b.c., most probably the former,” Rutherford nodded approvingly. The faint note of surprise underlying the approval made it less than altogether flattering. “By that period, it is difficult to know just how widespread literal belief in the Olympian gods was. And yet contemporary Greeks seem to have been firmly convinced that Pan—a minor god whose name is the root of the English ‘panic’—intervened actively on behalf of the Athenians.”

“I never encountered, or heard of, a Teloi who went by that name,” said Jason dubiously.

“I know. Another difficulty is that Pan—unlike most Greek gods, who were visualized as idealized humans—was a hybrid figure with the legs and horns of a goat and exceptionally large . . . er, male sexual equipment.”

“That doesn’t sound like the Teloi,” said Jason, recalling seven-to-eight-foot-tall humanoids with hair like a shimmering alloy of gold and silver, their pale-skinned faces long, narrow, and sharp-featured, with huge oblique eyes under brows which, like their high cheekbones, tilted upward. Those eyes’ strangely opaque blue irises seemed to leak their color into the pale-blue “whites.” The overall impression hovered uneasily between exotic beauty and disturbing alienness.

“Nevertheless,” said Rutherford, “the matter is unquestionably worth looking into. And, aside from the definite timeframe involved, there are numerous other benefits. For one thing, the more recent date will result in a lesser energy requirement for the displacement.”

“Well, yes. 490 b.c. is only—” (Jason did the mental arithmetic without the help of his computer implant) “—twenty-eight hundred and seventy years ago. Still, that’s one hell of an ‘only!’ Compared to any expedition you’d ever sent out before ours—”

“Too true. But the importance of investigating Teloi involvement in historical times is such that we have been able to obtain authorization. It also helped that the Battle of Marathon is so inherently interesting. It was, after all, crucial to the survival of Western civilization. And there are a number of unanswered questions about it, quite aside from the Teloi. So we can kill two birds with one stone, as people say.”

“Still, I don’t imagine you’ll be able to send a very large party.” The titanic energy expenditure required for displacement was tied to two factors: the mass to be displaced, and the temporal “distance” it was to be sent into the past. This was why Jason had taken only two companions with him to the Bronze Age, by far the longest displacement ever attempted. Since the trade-off was inescapable, the Authority was constantly looking into ways to reduce the total energy requirement, and the researchers were ceaselessly holding out hope of eventual success, but to date the problem remained intractable. This, aside from sheer caution, was why no large items of equipment were ever sent back in time. Sending human bodies—with their clothing, and any items they could wear or carry on their persons, for reasons related to the esoteric physics of time travel—was expensive enough.

“True, the party will have to be a small one. But the appropriation is comparable to that for your last expedition. So we can send four people.” Rutherford took on the aspect of one bestowing