"What manner of men are these fearsome foes?" asked Jason.
"These are not men, but giants," Cyzicus said. "Each of them possesses not two arms, but six. And in the hand of each arm is held a heavy wooden club that with one blow can crush a skull or break all of a man's ribs. They descend upon us from the hills and seize our harvests and our livestock. There is nothing we can do to stop them. Our bravest men have fallen to them and our fairest women have been carried off."
"Be they men with two arms or giants with six," said Jason, "I was not taught to refuse help to those in need of it, nor is it in my blood to flee from danger. You have welcomed us and treated us as honored guests. You have acted honorably and we can do no less. What say you men? Shall we give these six-armed titans a foe worthy of doing battle with them?"
"Just how big are these giants, anyway?" Delaney said, but his question was lost in the cheer given by the others.
The Argonauts gathered up their weapons and followed Cyzicus outside, where they were joined by a group of soldiers who led them to the stables. Within a short time, they were mounted and riding toward the hills. The three temporal agents hung back at the rear so they could talk without being overheard.
"Six-armed giants?" Andre said.
"I know what you're thinking," said Delaney. "I'm thinking the same thing."
"First Amazons, now six-armed giants?" Steiger said. "What in God's name is going on here? What are these people doing, clocking androids back here by the dozens?"
"Why would androids carry off their women?" said Delaney.
"It almost seems as if they studied the events and creatures of our Greek mythology and are trying to duplicate them," Andre said.
Steiger stared at her. "That's a hell of an idea," he said.
"Let's run with it for a minute," said Delaney. "The Argonautica of Apollonius is supposedly based on actual historical events which became mythologized over the years. The situation here seems .similar. Let's assume we're confronted with an attempt to recreate those mythical events and make them real. Why?"
"Is it possible they could be trying to redirect the flow of their own history for some specific purpose?" Andre said.
"That would amount to creating a split in their own time-line," said Delaney. "Why would they want to jeopardize their own temporal stability?"
"We keep coming back to square one," said Steiger. "No matter what kind of explanation we come up with, nothing about this scenario seems to fit together. We're not getting anywhere."
"We're getting closer to Colchis," Andre said. "If events continue to progress according to the myth, then that
has to be the focal point of this scenario."
"Then why use androids to try to stop the Argonauts at Lemnos?" asked Delaney.
"It leads nowhere again," said Steiger. "Every hypothetical scenario we put together falls apart from inconsistencies."
"Maybe that's where we're going wrong," said Andre. "We keep trying to come up with rational explanations."
"Meaning there's an irrational one?" said Steiger. "We're back to the supernatural again? It's going to take a lot of convincing to get me to buy that."
"If the answer keeps coming out incorrect, something has to be wrong with the equation," Andre said.
"So let's take another look at the equation," said Delaney. "Let's go back to the beginning and take it one step at a time. A number of factors seem to indicate that the people from the future of this timeline are attempting to construct a temporal scenario based upon the voyage of the Argonauts. We have the centaur and the incident at Delphi, plus the hooded man who keeps turning up everywhere. He may be with us on the voyage, posing as one of the Argonauts or there may be other explanations for his sudden appearances and disappearances, as well as for the centaur and what we saw at Delphi, but the androids at Lemnos can't be explained away. We're assuming our cover has been blown. We can't get rid of our warp discs. Our only alternative is to abort the mission and run if they close in. Only they haven't closed in. Why? Because they've made that choice or because they haven't had an opportunity?"
"They've had plenty of opportunities," said Steiger. '"Have they? I'm not so sure. Maybe we're making some incorrect assumptions. Let's take the centaur first. What are the odds of a creature like that having evolved naturally?"
"I should think it would require a radically different evolutionary process in this universe," said Steiger, "involving significantly different life forms. Nothing we've seen so far supports that. If the centaur didn't evolve naturally, then that leaves us with either magic or some sort of genetic engineering, including the possibility of android technology advanced beyond our level. The think-tank boys in Archives Section considered the possibility of magic based on prior intelligence that certain physical laws in this universe may be different from ours. But we've seen no real evidence of that. Until we do, I'm going to look for rational explanations. So the only rational explanation possible is that the centaur is an artificially created being. The hooded man is linked with both the centaur and the androids, which supports that theory. The centaur is considerably more sophisticated than the android women, so it's either a more advanced model or a genetically engineered creature."
"But that still leaves us with several elements that don't seem to fit together," said Andre. "If the centaur was sent through the confluence to draw us in, then for what purpose? So they could capture us and wring us dry? They could have done that before we ever got to Iolchos or at any time during the construction of the Argo. Did they intend to use us as part of their scenario? Again, why? Why not use their own people? Why risk our disrupting their timeline? And if they wanted us alive to use us, why did Hypsipyle order the androids to kill us? And why would they be careless enough to let us discover that the Lemnos women were androids in the first place?"
"I think our original assumption was correct," Delaney said. "The centaur came through the confluence by accident. As a result, we crossed over and stumbled into a temporal adjustment scenario of some sort. If we assume the opposition never detected us, then there was no reason for them to expect anyone from our timeline on the scene because they didn't know about the confluence."
He looked at Steiger. "Remember when you followed the hooded man in Iolchos and someone jumped you? If there was no reason for anyone to suspect we were anything but what we appeared to be, the logical assumption for them to make was that you were following the hooded man to find out who Jason's secret benefactors were. It never occurred to them that you might be a temporal agent from another timeline, so it never occurred to them to check you for a warp disc. If we work from that assumption, then that means our cover was still safe at that point. It would explain why they never moved against us while we were unconscious in the cell at Lemnos. They didn't know who we really were. The only other time when our cover might have been blown occurred when the hooded man saw you fight those two androids. I'm sure that even in this universe, ancient Greeks never used combat karate. But could that have tipped him off? You said he pulled a fast disappearing act. Could he have put it all together so quickly? He saw you using modern fighting techniques, but it's still a long jump to make from realizing that to concluding you were from another timeline."
Steiger nodded. "He could have checked with someone and reported what he saw, asked if anyone knew what the hell was going on. They may have problems of their own we know nothing about."
"And meanwhile," said Delaney, "we were getting the hell put of there and in the process, I didn't exactly treat Hypsipyle in a very queenly manner. If she wasn't part of their adjustment team, but just a local they were using, then she obviously wouldn't have been fully briefed. So she lost her temper and ordered the androids to kill us on her own. It's possible they never meant to kill the Argonauts."