From: "Roy C. Lackey" 
Subject: (urth) FLF: timeline problem
Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2002 01:00:15 -0600

One of the problems with making a personal timeline for Free (that is, one
made from his viewpoint), is Wolfe's first entry in the chronology at the
end of the book. It states that Free, age 60 but looking younger than that,
joined the Lewis & Clark Expedition in 1803. However, the version of Free in
the cockpit conversation told the four boarders that he was unsure of his
exact age then, but that he was somewhere between 60 and 70. The problem is
that he also told them that when he (when he was younger, as Whitten) came
to their time (Nov. 1982), Free wasn't there and that "I think that he must
have gone to some other time, although I have no idea what that time might
be. To the Lewis and Clark expedition, I hope." How can that
sixty-something-year-old version of Free (who looked his age; when they
first saw him in the pilot's chair it was the "familiar, bearded face of Ben
Free" they saw) not know what he had done when he was 60?

-Roy


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