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. Suck 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 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 gave his as Marshal and asked when in the future was he. He was a surprise and one that from the very first challenged 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.

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 technology that Emma was developing to move four massive spaceships carrying one billion beings made it clear to those on Earth that they were technologically outclassed.

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 results in a phoenix like turn in the battle that subdues the Aliens. Marshall set up a generous peace.

Marshal has figured out a way to use the far future to put him back close to his own time. He waits for almost a year to for time to pass until he watches himself and his sons pulled into the future.

He then meets his wife of forty years to console, comfort her as he explains what happened. He knows that his entire family will be pulled into the future at the appropriate time.