s top scientists to build a super-bomb which would utterly
destroy Earth?

He could, of course. In theory, such a crash program, with Jason Wall's
money and industrial know-how behind it, was a possibility. But for
another reason, for a very simple reason, it was quite obviously
impossible.

The scientists wouldn't do it.

Suicide? Never. He decided that firmly, two months after the prognosis.
World-destruction? Impossible. Then what?

* * * * *

It was Eve who, trying to flaunt an intellectual prowess she really did
not have, told him about time travel. There was this article she had
read in the newspaper Sunday supplement, about the possibility of moving
backwards through time. There was absolutely no natural law which said
it could not be done, the article said. It was merely a question of
probability. For, while in theory time travel was possible, it was
practically impossible--unless, as the article suggested and Jason Wall
thought in triumph, you pushed it. If you pushed it, the improbability
became a possibility, then a probability, then a reality.

Crash program, he thought.

The world was made of particles. All reality, particles. Discreet
particles of matter, of time, of space-time. Building blocks of the
universe. Now, take these particles; and return them to the positions
they occupied a moment ago--and you travel into the immediate past.
Re-arrange them into the positions they occupied years ago, decades,
generations, aeons--and you have time travel.

Crash program. Billions of dollars, he thought. All the world's great
physicists. It could be done. He could do it.

But--so what?

Jason Wall smiled. It was the way his mind often functioned. Decide on
something, apparently without relation to your problem. Then use it.

He couldn't have the world destroyed, despite his money and the decided
possibility of instituting a crash program to do it. He wouldn't be able
to fool the scientists, and the scientists just wouldn't do it.

But a crash program for time travel, now that was something else. That
could be done. He would see that it _was_ done.

For what purpose?

To return to the dawn of the human race. To find dawn man, the first
man. Call him Adam. To find the first truly human being.

To kill him.

To snuff humanity out at its source, as a flame is snuffed before it can
start a fire.

To prevent the human race from enjoying what he would never enjoy. To