The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Big Time, by Fritz Reuter Leiber

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Title: The Big Time

Author: Fritz Reuter Leiber

Illustrator: Virgil Finlay

Release Date: May 5, 2010 [EBook #32256]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration]

By FRITZ LEIBER

THE BIG TIME

_You can't know there's a war on--for the Snakes coil and Spiders
weave to keep you from knowing it's being fought over your live and
dead body!_

Illustrated by FINLAY

CHAPTER 1

When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

When the hurlyburly's done.
When the battle's lost and won.

--Macbeth

ENTER THREE HUSSARS

My name is Greta Forzane. Twenty-nine and a party girl would describe
me. I was born in Chicago, of Scandinavian parents, but now I operate
chiefly outside space and time--not in Heaven or Hell, if there are such
places, but not in the cosmos or universe you know either.

I am not as romantically entrancing as the immortal film star who also
bears my first name, but I have a rough-and-ready charm of my own. I
need it, for my job is to nurse back to health and kid back to sanity
Soldiers badly roughed up in the biggest war going. This war is the
Change War, a war of time travelers--in fact, our private name for being
in this war is being on the Big Time. Our Soldiers fight by going back
to change the past, or even ahead to change the future, in ways to help
our side win the final victory a billion or more years from now. A long
killing business, believe me.

You don't know about the Change War, but it's influencing your lives all
the time and maybe you've had hints of it without realizing.

Have you ever worried about your memory, because it doesn't seem to be
bringing you exactly the same picture of the past from one day to the
next? Have you ever been afraid that your personality was changing
because of forces beyond your knowledge or control? Have you ever felt
sure tha