Hyperspace is like a river.

The strangest river there ever was, declared Hapgood.

Jimmy Hapgood pondered the mysteries of hyperspace every time he used it to traverse the galaxy. Once he dropped back into Normal Space, he rarely thought about it. The hyperspace engines the Terokians had fitted Travelling Man with during his stay on their world were simply tools he used to accomplish his task.

It gets me where I want to go, he summarized.

At the moment, Hapgood was piloting Travelling Man on a course matching the one the Robinson family had followed thirty years earlier. The Robinsons were lost and trapped on a primitive planet when he had last crossed paths with them.

Hapgood had been treated kindly by the family during his brief stay with them. Now he was looking for them to repay the favor. However, during his years on Terok, the Robinsons had traveled back to the stars in search of a way home. Hapgood had been trailing them ever since in hopes of meeting up with them.

Doubt if they’d recognize me now.

Hapgood’s spacecraft, Travelling Man, had slammed into the Terokian’s planetary defense shield two years after he had left the Robinsons. The impact had pretty much demolished Hapgood and Travelling Man. The Terokians had rebuilt both of them. Now Hapgood was more machine than human.

The Terokians had no knowledge of human physiology so they had saved the Texan’s brain matter and rebuilt him as an exploratory probe. When he felt up to it, they bade him farewell and he returned to the stars.

Hapgood had learned to admire the Terokians because they were as stubborn as he was. A race of sentient machines, they had been in existence since long before Earth had supported even the most primitive of life. They had built a vast civilization based on ever evolving technology.

When Hapgood had dropped in on them, the Terokians were involved in their greatest challenge – their very survival. The star that their planet orbited was dying. They had discovered the breakdown several thousand years earlier and made their decision.

They would not leave their homeworld. Instead, they chose to save it by undertaking their greatest technological feat. The Terokians had begun encasing the world and it’s collapsing star into a gigantic sphere that would trap the star’s decreased energy and extend the life of their world for another billion years.

By the time of Hapgood's arrival they had already broken down the other six planets in the system for raw material.

The Terokians had developed hyperspace travel as part of their massive project. They traversed hyperspace to other stars to observe and learn.

"Yea, hyperdrive was just one more tool in the Terokians R&D department" observed Hapgood. He had surmised that they had given him the technology because they had sensed his mission to find the Robinson family would require such a tool.

Hapgood was never sure if even the Terokians understood the nature of hyperspace. They had created propulsion drives that tapped into it and probably left it at that. Saving their mechanical civilization took precedence over exploring the physics of hyperspace.

Once again, Hapgood turned his thoughts to describing travel in hyperspace. Whenever he entered hyperspace he experienced only the slightest sensation of motion. The major change was in the visual mode.

Hapgood knew there was no up or down in space. However, once in hyperspace all the stars seemed to converge into a ribbon above him. A ribbon made up of trillions of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy with all the vastness between them squeezed away. If he looked close enough, he could discern the individual dots representing stars. The ribbon moved in a steady flow while everything else in his view was a dark void. Not quite blackness, but close to it.

The ribbon would continue to move until Travelling Man’s guidance system yanked them back into normal space in a blinding flash, followed by another period of darkness and then the reappearance of stars in their normal position.

Occasionally, Hapgood would rotate his ship so he could look in the pseudo down direction rather than up at the river of stars. Downward, there was only darkness. Hapgood realized that the Terokians probably never bothered to investigate the dark portion of hyperspace. It served no purpose to a Terokian.

"I’m a Texan, not a Terokian" stated Hapgood as he nudged Travelling Man away from the star ribbon. He had several hours of hyperspace before he reached his destination and deduced he had a little time to snoop around.

As the ship moved in the non-existent down direction, Hapgood observed that the darkness level of hyperspace increased as the ship moved deeper into hyperspace. He began passing through distinctive bands of coloration, each band darker than the previous until he found himself gazing into blackness more stark than he imagined possible.

Hapgood recalled that, in his youth, he would search for fossils in the canyons and gullies of west Texas. The canyon walls were streaked with bands of color - each band of sediment representing a different era in history.

Sedimentary space.

As Hapgood began to puzzle the significance of hyperspace layers, he was startled by the sudden shriek of Travelling Man's navigational alarms. The ship was suddenly pulled forward and deeper into the darkness.

Hapgood muttered under his breath as he began a course correction. The descent decreased, but the ship's nav display showed that the ship would continue down before it began its loop back up into hyperspace prime.

"Next time remind me to leave hyperspace well enough alone" he said aloud as he squinted into the ebony void outside his viewport.

Just as the ships trajectory began to level off, he saw them.

Strange, luminous objects that reminded him of bubbles floated slowly below him in random directions. Many of them appeared to have landscapes within. Others were cold and empty. All but one were too distant for any detail. Travelling Man passed within yards of one as it began its deliberate ascent and Hapgood strained to see what lay within.

This can't be real.

The light within the bubble was subdued, with intermittent flashes that revealed a landscape littered with machinery of unknown purpose and origin. What caught Hapgood's attention, however, was the figure that stared back at him.

Whoever it was appeared human, dressed in long robes and carrying a long-handled object in one hand. He was hunched over some machinery while looking up at Hapgood's ship passing just overhead. He was visible for mere seconds before Travelling Man's trajectory pulled him from view. Hapgood switched on the rear view monitors, but the bubbles had already receded back into the darkness below.

Hapgood tried to make sense of the figure's strange expression as they had faced each other. It appeared to be a mixture of surprise and subtle bemusement.

He had little time to dwell on this observation as his ship returned at last to hyperspace prime and, without warning, dropped prematurely back into Normal Space.

"We're way out of synch with our flight plan, old boys" he muttered as he analyzed the console readings. Before he could assimilate them all he was hit with another unexpected surprise when he looked out the viewport to see that in was in orbit around an intimately familiar planet.

"Earth" he whispered.

He quickly switched the ship to a stealth mode that would make his craft undetectable by virtually every known tracking system. This was also Terokian technology. They preferred to keep a low profile when they studied other star systems.

The stealth system, however, did not remove the visual attributes of Travelling Man and Hapgood was soon faced with an insistent voice on his speakers.

"Unidentified spacecraft" it crackled. "This is orbital earth traffic command, please identify yourself."

The demand was repeated two more times before Hapgood responded. This was not something he had looked forward to at all. He had decided long ago that he would not return to Earth. He no longer belonged there. Space was his only home.

"Now hold your horses, boy" he said wearily. "Don't get trigger happy or anything like that. Hapgood's my name. Jimmy Hapgood. You may have heard of me. I left earth September 3, 1986 bound for Saturn. I just got a little off track is all."

There was a long pause from the speakers. Hapgood's scan had picked up the ship in orbit less than ten miles below him. There were relatively few ships showing up in orbit. When Hapgood had left Earth there were at least a dozen humans in orbit at the time. He had expected to see a lot more after nearly forty years.

"I don't know who you're trying to fool, sir" returned the voice. "But the joke's not funny. Now please identify yourself".

They think I'm dead, mused Hapgood. After all these years, they can't believe I'm still alive.

"Look, sonny. I know it's hard to believe, but I managed to survive out there somehow and I'm back. You understand?"

"No, you listen to me, mister. If you want to risk arrest with this type of stunt, you should at least get your facts straight. I'm not an expert on the early days of the space program, but anyone could check the net and know that there is no record of a Jimmy Hapgood leaving Earth in 1986, much less going to Saturn!"

"What the hell are you babbling about? Me and my ship left the Cape at 0700 hours on September 3, 1986! It wasn't exactly a secret you know. I was bound for Saturn, or at least the moons of Saturn …"

"You need to come up with a better story than that. Everyone knows there were no manned missions to Saturn until this century …"

Hapgood slapped the control panel. He switched the stealth mode up to visual override. To the crew of the traffic command ship, it blinked completely out of existence.

Gotta sort this thing out. Something's is definitely messed up here.

He put Traveling Man to work tapping into the global com systems below. Within moments, the ship's computers were downloading terabytes of data for research. Special emphasis was on historical databases. Within an hour the analysis was complete. Hapgood didn't like the results.

There was nothing in the history files about his space mission. In fact there was no information about the previous six manned missions. The entire Deep Space program that followed the Apollo lunar missions was missing from history. There was no record of any manned missions to the outer planets and no interstellar missions at all.

There was not a single file on the Robinson family. No Jupiter 1 or Jupiter 2 were constructed or launched.

There was only one possible answer to explain the mystery and Hapgood was not pleased with the implications.

"Do I really exist?" he asked himself. "Or is this all some type of mechanized nightmare, courtesy of the Terokians?"

Since leaving the Terokian homeworld, Hapgood had puzzled over the strange dreams he experienced during his automatic periods of inactivity. He had theorized that the Terokians had analyzed his human brain and recognized the need for humans to dream.

What if I'm a dream? He wondered.

"Oh, trust me, Hapgood. This is not a dream."

Hapgood snapped immediately from his stupor and scanned his control panel. The voice had originated from his communications panel. The rarely used video screen, suddenly blinked on and a familiar face peered back at him. It was the mysterious figure in the hyperspace bubble.

"Who the hell are you" snarled Hapgood. "And what kind of trick are you pulling here?"

"Believe me" the man replied. "This is definitely not a trick. However, perhaps we should continue this conversation elsewhere."

There was a momentary sensation of motion and Hapgood found himself floating above the strange landscape he had observed in the hyperspace bubble. Travelling Man was safely perched on a nearby ledge.

The robed figure approached Hapgood and extended his hand with a bemused expression on his face.

"Allow me to introduce myself," he said. "I am known as Chronos, The Time Merchant."

Hapgood extended his mechanical arm and clasped hands with the strange figure. His scans told him the man was possibly human, with a significant margin of error.

"Are you responsible for this mess?" demanded Hapgood.

"In a sense, I am" the man replied. "But the blame ultimately falls on your beloved Robinson family."

"You're not making any sense."

The man shrugged and circled Hapgood.

"About thirty of your Earth years ago I was, shall we say, detained by the Robinsons. The consequences of that incident were substantial."

"I don't understand."

"I'm sure you don't" Chronos replied. "You see, I'm called The Time Merchant because I am responsible for maintaining the time continuum in this plane of space."

"Then what are you doing spooking around down here in hyperspace?"

Chronos smiled.

"Oh, this is much more than hyperspace" he explained. "There are many layers here below Normal Space. The slipstream you use for jumping around the galaxy is just one. Other layers, such as this one, are used for matters of time and cross-dimensional transference."

Hapgood was silent as he digested the stranger's words. His travels over the years had taught him not to discard anything - even the most bizarre.

"Let me summarize for you" Chronos continued. "The Robinson party, specifically one Zachary Smith, meddled with the time continuum and traveled back in time in an effort to effect their fate. As a result, I had to do some damage control."

"What kind of damage control?"

"Let's just say we got Smith back to his own time after I cut a deal with Professor Robinson …"

"A deal?"

"Don't concern yourself with that, Hapgood" said Chronos. "Suffice to say, it served its purpose. The Robinsons continued on their merry way, never knowing the trouble I went through to fix their mess."

Hapgood sensed where the conversation was leading. Chronos' mood became more somber.

"Every disruption in the time continuum has serious consequences in this universe. It's my job to keep things in order, the best way I can. Sometimes the fixes are a bit more … creative."

"How creative are we talking about here?" drawled Hapgood. Chronos sighed.

"Your time line is no longer singular" he said flatly. He waved back an objection from the Texan.

"The imbalance was more severe than I anticipated. The only way to rectify the matter was to rewind the timeline and recreate the events. Sort of like restoring files from a backup disk, so to speak. I even tried starting the line a few years earlier than the actual time disruption, but to no avail. The differential between the old and new timeline became so severe I had to separate them entirely."

"You're not making much sense here, Chronos" said Hapgood.

"The bottom line is this. A new timeline was created with certain elements missing. This is the timeline your little fit of curiosity in hyperspace led you to. In this timeline, they don't know you from Barney the dinosaur."

"Barney who?"

"Nevermind" replied Chronos. "I forgot he never caught on in your timeline."

Chronos paced back in forth, waving at the rows of temporal storage silos behind him.

"The new timeline was missing a number of minor temporal events, but the crucial event missing was a certain technological revelation that occurred a few weeks after the first manned landing on Earth's moon. …"

It was starting to make sense to Hapgood. The difference in timelines was extraterrestrial in origin.

"You're telling me that the problem involves the Utah event?"

Chronos nodded.

"Exactly. In this new timeframe, there was no discovery of an authentic alien spacecraft in the wilderness of Utah in 1969. Therefore, there was none of the sudden technological leaps that led to your sojourn into space history."

It was beginning to make sense to Hapgood now. The discovery of an ancient alien spacecraft in 1969 accelerated the space program. The technology gleamed from the wreckage led to space propulsion systems that made the lunar landing seem like child's play.

The military benefited from the development of laser weapons of massive destructive power.

By the late seventies, there were colonies on the Moon, Mars and several of the larger asteroids. Deep space probes were launched to seek out inhabitable worlds on nearby star systems. Hapgood was the pilot of the sixth mission to Saturn's moons. It was all part of plan to establish bases in the outer edge of the solar system. A jumping off point for the stars.

Hapgood had missed out on the rest of the story. When he left Houston, the Jupiter One was on the drawing boards. If he had made it back from Saturn, he would have been a likely pilot for the first interstellar colonizing mission. Based on what the Robinsons had told him, his getting lost in space had been a good career move.

"Don't you see, Hapgood?" asked Chronos with a tinge of impatience. "The excavation never took place in the new time frame. No alien technology and the space program continued at an excruciating snail's pace. There were several more manned landings on the moon until the public lost interest."

Chronos waved his hand at Travelling Man.

"There were no manned missions to the outer planets so you were never recruited into the space program. You found other career opportunities of an earthbound nature."

Hapgood had a pretty good idea what those opportunities. He could picture himself as retired rancher near Abilene. It all made since now. Sort of.

"What about the Robinsons in this new time frame?"

"Oh, they are destined to be the first family in space after all" smiled Chronos. "I needed a breather from them so I shifted them in the timeline somewhat. They're not due to leave Earth until 2058 in this timeline. Better late, than never, I always say."

Chronos returned to his desk and began shuffling through his papers. It was obvious to Hapgood that their business was concluded.

"What happens to me now?" he asked. Chronos looked up briefly and waved his hand dismissively.

"You will return to your old timeline, of course" he said. "I can't have you fouling up this new one, so to speak."

Hapgood floated back towards Travelling Man as Chronos spoke.

"You may continue your quest for the Robinson family if you so choose. However …"

Hapgood paused at the hatchway as Chronos continued.

"I must warn you that the results of your quest may not be what you expect them to be."

Chronos hesitated.

"I said earlier that Professor Robinson and I had an arrangement. When you meet up with the Robinsons, you may tell them the deal is now voided."

"I don't understand" said Hapgood as he prepared to close the hatch.

"Of course you don't" replied Chronos. "But the Robinsons will. Now please leave, I have work to do."

Hapgood steered Travelling Man in the non-existent up direction, passing through the various shades of blackness until he reached the familiar ribbon of stars. Soon he would wrench free from hyperspace and pick up the trail of the Robinsons.

As he prepared for the return to Normal Space he began to ponder the alternate timeline he had briefly visited but quickly pushed the thoughts aside.

Time enough for that later, he told himself.

With a flash, he leaped to Normal Space.

And Normal time.