"I sat up all last night writing the manuscript that's inside it. Look,
Mac, when you go back to the Guided Missile Experiment of 1976 and
push that red switch away from you, a lot of other things are going to
happen than just deflecting the missile so that it will explode in the
Brazilian jungle instead of the Pacific Ocean."
"Sure. I know. If it explodes in the jungle, the Epidemic doesn't
occur. No Shapiro's Mumps."
Skeat jiggled his pudgy little face impatiently. "That's not what I
mean. The Epidemic doesn't occur, but something else does. A new world,
a different 2089, an alternate time sequence. It'll be a world in which
humanity has a better chance to survive, but it'll be one with problems
of its own. Maybe tough problems. Maybe the problems will be tough
enough so that they'll get the same idea we did and try to go back to
the same point in time to change them."
* * * * *