"Don't--don't let them go back to New York! It said--it said--" he
gasped and took a deep breath "--WE'LL ALL BE KILLED!" he screamed.
"Why?" Karnes's voice was cold.
"BOMB!" Brittain screamed again.
After a few more minutes of questioning, Karnes finally got the rest
of the story from him.
The Galactics had found that on this date a nuclear bomb would get
through the UN screen and completely destroy most of Greater New York.
Only one other bomb would get through, but it would be thrown off
course and land somewhere in the Pacific, having missed Los Angeles
entirely.
"Anything else?" asked Karnes after a few seconds of silence from
Brittain. "Didn't it say they would have to prevent that?"
Brittain's voice was dull now. "All it said was that the records would
have to be preserved. It said that things must go on exactly as
before. It said that nothing must interfere with the complete
development, whatever that means."
Karnes pushed his way out of the room and back towards the pilot's
compartment. What the pilot had to say was no news to Karnes.
"Radio from New York says that a bomb missed LA and hit the ocean.
That was a close one."
Karnes nodded silently, and leaned back in the stewardess' seat to
think.
* * * * *
No wonder Brittain had been so anxious to get out of New York.
New York would be destroyed, but that was inevitable. The thing that
had bothered him, his dilemma, was solved.
Was this the real Earth that he lived in, or a museum that had been
set up by the Galactics? If it was old Earth, then man would solve his
present problems and go on to solve the problem of time travel and
interstellar transportation. The present war would be just another
little incident in the far past, like the battles of Gettysburg and
Agincourt.
* * * * *
And if it were the museum Earth? No difference. For the Galactics had
decided not to interfere. They had decided to let the race of Earth go
on as it was--exactly as it had gone before. It made no difference,
really. _No difference at all._ A perfect duplication of an original
_was_ the original, in every meaningful way.
"Funny," said the pilot abruptly, "I'm not getting any signal from New
York."
Karnes took a deep breath and bit at his lower lip. But he did not
look toward the horror that was New York. The city was gone, but the
world was there--solid and real!
_You'd better expand your museum a little bit, boys_, he thought.
_We'll need to include Mars and Venus before very long. And then the
stars._
* * * * *