trusted and there was no physical menace that the conductor-screens or the katonator-guns could not cope with, there was the ever-present danger of Fan-Shaped Time itself.

It was the First Law of Chronistics: Our era is the product of everything that occurred in the past. Should anything in the past be changed, our age would also be changed. Oh, it would continue to exist, but in a parallel branch of time—and there was no way of passing from one branch to another. And if a traveler into the past should interfere in the course of events, he would be bound to the new time-stream his actions created, and the unlucky traveler would never be able to return.

The branches of Fan-Shaped time could never be retraced. The man who interfered with the space-time matrix, displacing even a comma in the great scroll of time, would be cut off from his origin forever.

The danger was too great. I refused to accept the assignment, even though I knew it would mean I could never rise to the status of Tri-Alpha citizenship which was otherwise my right.

But then I heard about Elren—lovely, adored Elren Dri—and I could no longer refuse.

For Elren's Mating Indices were posted, and she was a Tri-Alpha herself! Then I understood what had been in Master Lys' mind when he set that impossible task for me. For I knew that the gnarled, worm-eaten old wreck had dared to covet my Elren! Loving me, she could never be his. But with me out of the way he might have a chance.

I accepted the assignment. Master Lys secured a time-belt for me—he was willing enough to help at my execution—and I began my perilous journey through time.

I came back to my surroundings with a start. Something was wrong!

Subconsciously I had been studying the atom-rocket, and now I was jolted out of my reveries as I realized that it did not look as it should have.

The ortho-history books were clear on one fact: Venus had been destroyed in the War of Annihilation by means of a hydrogen-chain reaction, the most deadly atom blast known. Atoms of hydrogen, under the influence of gamma-particle bombardment, coalesced to form atoms of helium—and all the incalculable power represented by the odd fraction of mass left over was released in the form of free energy.

But the atom-rocket before me seemed to be nothing more than a simple nuclear-fission affair! 

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