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You instruct CAIN to turn on the Variac Drive to shift you into null-space and to re-engage the Drive as soon as you have finished inputting the navigational co-ordinates for the Timehole in the time of Alexander the Great. Your scalp tingles slightly as the Time Machine moves out of phase, and everythingaround you seems grey and insubstantial. You know that should you turn on the outside camera the screen would remain blank - not even blackness exists in Null-space. You cast your thought into the void and using your Psychic Awareness locate the Timehole of Alexander the Great. When you have translated this location into co-ordinates for CAIN, the Variac Drive engages once more. The process of re-emerging in real time is immediate, but seems to take around an hour for you. You may spend this time in the Autodoc, if you wish and gain up to 12 Endurance points.
You rematerialize and the Holo-projector makes Falcon's Wing look like a bleak hillock. Your exterior camera shows a small range of desolate hills giving way to a dry plain crossed by a small river. You press 'hold' and the camera stops swivelling as a small city of mud-baked houses surrounded by tall, white stone walls and towers appears on the screen. It is what lies before the city which catches your eye. An entire army, perhaps forty thousand strong, is encamped before the city walls. The tattered tents are braced against the breeze and hundreds of wagons stand in a second camp further from the city, where gaggles of wagoners, camp followers and walking wounded seem to mock the orderly precision of the ranks of men, resplendent in their armour, the sun glinting from the tips of their sixteen-foot-long spears. They stand as if on parade. You ask CAIN what happened here, historically, He chimes. This city is the local capital. The people marches out to give battle to Alexander the Great and his army of Macedonians and troops from other conquered lands, two days ago, but fled when they saw Alexander and his men Alexander is returning from India to Babylon, the capital of his new empire and has decided to take this city. His men do not want to risk their lives again and he will soon head the assault in an attempt to inspire them. Realising that he is going to risk his life, his men will throw themselves onto the siege ladders, but these will be broken in their eagerness. Two men only will be with Alexander when he jumps down into the city and he will be severely wounded before the Macedonians break down the gates and rescue him ...'
'Thank you CAIN,' you interrupt. 'What action would change the Timeline here?'
CAIN says, The assassination of Alexander would seem the most likely option, but I cannot compute the effect this would have on the past. Alexander will die in only a few years from now at the age of-thirty-three and his empire will be divided up and fought over by his successors.' CAIN programmes the Molecular Converter to create the dress of a phalangite, a Macedonian warrior, and you step from Falcon's Wing wearing sandals, bronze greaves, a long heavy skirt of boiled leather strips, a breastplate, and a small round shield strapped to your left forearm. Your Psionic Enhancer becomes a crested helmet covering your face, with a Y-shaped slit for you to see through. Unable to wield a sixteen-foot-long 'sarissa' you make do with a short sword. Your blaster and holo-detector are concealed under your red cloak. You search the hills for Lord Speke's machine. Turn to 403.