Emma looked into the eyes of the young man on the bed. She had successfully extracted he and two others from a blazing inferno and brought them five hundred years into the future. It was amazing to her that he and the two others had no major injuries. This was one of the most successful extractions that her team had experienced. Normally they ended up with broken bodies that seemed to have fallen from some great height.

She desperately needed healthy and physically able humans to send back into the past.

The human DNA was deteriorating and needed to be rejuvenated. Her team had sent several subjects into the past but there was no DNA improvement indication. Such a change was the only measure that the team had determined would indicate success.

Now these three had been brought forward and they were in excellent health and condition. The male came through in a conscious state. This was a first. He was given sedatives and put to sleep.

She wanted to keep him long enough to interview him to see what she could learn but she was overruled. The transmission into the past was to go on as scheduled.

The male to be sent back jumped from his bed and into the transmission pedestal. He was transmitted into the past. The two females were sent back on the next day.

The next extraction from the past yielded an even more dramatic scene. The extraction was for a young female. What arrived was the young female and an older male. He was not on the list for extraction. He came through wide awake and ready for combat. He declared that his name was Marshal and asked when in the future was he.

He was a surprise and one that from the very first challenge Emma’s understanding of the past. He it turned out was the father of the next two young men to be extracted. Emma knew from the beginning he was an anomaly that her team had somehow not planned for.

At almost the same time, the Aliens from another part of the galaxy came through a fold in space.

The fact that these beings had been able to utilize the infant technology that Emma was developing to move four massive spaceships carrying one billion of them made it clear to those on Earth that they were technologically out classed.

Earth denies the Aliens the right to settle and share the planet equally. They offer to accept a portion of the Aliens. This is not accepted and a major battle ensues.

Earth is on the losing end. It is desperate.

Marshal uses his war experience, the ancient weapons of the twenty and twenty-first century to successfully change the course of the battle. His son’s manipulation of the newly developed matter transmitter in a phoenix like turn in the battle subdue the Aliens.

Marshal has figured out a way to use the far future to put him back close to his own time. He watches himself and his sons being pulled into the future.

He then goes to meet his wife of forty years to comfort her. She was the reason for his return to his own time.

The future would have to wait for him be ready to make the trip again.