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probe had travelled not up or down the timestream but across to the same point of a different timestream."
    "A conclusion that showed great intellectual courage and flexibility," Tylar approved.
    "I suppose becoming hidebound is one of the many luxuries we've never been able to afford. At any rate, the video broadcasts the probe had picked up showed that the inhabitants of Chiron—the other Chiron—were human. Their language was indecipherable, although one of our more eccentric philologists claimed to discern, in part of the vocabulary, a remote kinship with the languages spoken by the barbarians of northwest Europe before their final incorporation into the Empire. Of more immediate concern was the fact that they possessed technology beyond our utmost horizons. We resolved to contact them and seek their help against the Korvaasha, perhaps enlisting their aid in liberating Earth.
    "The energy cost of the transtemporal breakthrough is enormous, and the generating machinery is almost prohibitively massive relative to the payload. It was out of the question to send more than one emissary, especially given the tonnage of life-support equipment he'd need for the voyage insystem to Chiron . . . or whatever you call it. The competition for that posting was fierce, despite the danger; we had no way of knowing for certain that a living organism could survive the transposition. Senior government officials were generally too old or otherwise disqualified. So they turned to those of us who had been in training for the projected faster-than-light interstellar expeditions. In the end, I was selected for good physical and mental health, lack of ties to my own world—I have no living relatives—and broad-based scientific knowledge. Not for historical expertise, as Tylar can attest!
    "As it turned out, I successfully made the transit and emerged into your reality. Then, just after I had set a course for Chiron, I was met by a ship which made even the technology of the alternate Chiron seem primitive."
    "You," Sarnac stated flatly to Tylar.
    "Yes. The emergence of the unmanned probe had set up a kind of dimensional fluctuation which our listening post could not fail to detect. The energy flux was quite unprecedented; we had no idea what was happening. So I was sent for. We were fully prepared for Andreas' appearance. We couldn't allow him to contact the twenty-ninth-century inhabitants of Lirauva, of course; our own history said nothing about any such contact. It was clearly a case where intervention was required to keep history on its proper course—the course that eventuates in us . So we picked him up."
    "I can imagine that scene," Sarnac remarked. He really could. ( "Oh I'm so sorry about this dreadful mixup, my dear fellow. . . . )
    "It soon became clear what had happened," Tylar continued, oblivious, "as incredible as it all seemed. The next step, of course, was to determine the exact point at which the two histories had diverged. Andreas, as he has admitted, is no historian. But he has an educated man's familiarity with the salient events and personalities. He knew that in the late fifth century the Roman Empire was being reunified. And he knew who had done it."
    "Yes," Andreas said. "The man who bestrides the ages. When I met him  . . ." He gazed across the table at Artorius. "Of course, I know that he isn't really Artorius Augustus the Restorer, that in your history he died—or was supposed to have died—at the same time he was winning the Battle of Bourges in mine. But still . . . do you know I was born in a city on Chiron called 'Artoriopolis'?" Artorius gave a gesture that was all offhand graciousness, while Sarnac tried to imagine meeting a George Washington who had been hanged by Lord North and lived on in legend.
    "Given this information," Tylar resumed, "I accessed Robert's recorded memories of that period. It wasn't hard to pinpoint that brief conversation."
    "Wait a minute, Tylar," Sarnac protested. "Are you