I held up my chronithon contactor, knowing that now I could impress him indeed. "Captain Briggs," I said, "I am a time-travelling historian from the Twenty-Second Century." I pointed to the big red button on the top. "Until I depress this button and return to my own day and age, every morning I receive my daily ration of food and water. It's about—"
I'd timed it close. I was interrupted by the click of the chronithon as it time-transferred my daily ration. I opened the cabinet and offered a bite of twenty-second century breakfast to the captain.
He said, "This is a sailor's tall tale, I think. You claim that you're a time-travelling historian? Then tell me, why are you here on Mary Celeste?"
"Captain Briggs," I said, "the Time Machine was invented in Nineteen Eighty-Seven. Within twenty years every historical event had been painstakingly researched and authentically written—re-written—by time-travelling historians who viewed the event as partaking eye-witnesses. By my time, fame and fortune awaits any man who has the luck and dogged determination to scour historic time to locate some event that has not been recounted faithfully to the last niggling little detail. Why, Captain Briggs, in Jim Bishop's famous 'The Day Columbus Landed' they record the name of the man who owned the hen that laid the egg that Columbus stood on end to impress Isabella with his ability. And so, Captain Briggs, I stowed away because I—"
A woman's voice interrupted me, I turned to look at the captain's wife who, of course, was the only woman aboard Mary Celeste. She was carrying little Sophia Matilda in her arms. She said, "Edward, what unearthly manner of ship is that?"
The steward, Edward Head replied, "I don't rightly know, ma-am."
I turned to look. No more than fifty feet from the starboard rail was a vast barge. Upon the barge were serried rows of seats that stretched upwards and backwards for hundreds of feet. The seats were filling rapidly; ushers were escorting the spectators efficiently, vendors were selling refreshments and programs. A thrumming sound came from overhead and I looked up to watch the materialization of jetcopters and personnel carriers and even a poised spacecraft hanging in a dome above our heads.
