d that's going to happen in thirty
years! You know, son, if I were you, I wouldn't like to have to know
about a thing like that." He looked at Allan for a moment. "Please, if
you know, don't ever tell me when I'm going to die."

Allan smiled. "I can't. I had a letter from you just before I left for
the front. You were seventy-eight, then, and you were still hunting, and
fishing, and flying your own plane. But I'm not going to get killed in
any Battle of Buffalo, this time, and if I can prevent it, and I think I
can, there won't be any World War III."

"But--You say all time exists, perpetually coexistent and totally
present," his father said. "Then it's right there in front of you, and
you're getting closer to it, every watch tick."

Allan Hartley shook his head. "You know what I remembered, when Frank
Gutchall came to borrow a gun?" he asked. "Well, the other time, I
hadn't been home: I'd been swimming at the Canoe Club, with Larry
Morton. When I got home, about half an hour from now, I found the house
full of cops. Gutchall talked the .38 officers' model out of you, and
gone home; he'd shot his wife four times through the body, finished her
off with another one back of the ear, and then used his sixth shot to
blast his brains out. The cops traced the gun; they took a very poor
view of your lending it to him. You never got it back."

"Trust that gang to keep a good gun," the lawyer said.

"I didn't want us to lose it, this time, and I didn't want to see you
lose face around City Hall. Gutchalls, of course, are expendable," Allan
said. "But my main reason for fixing Frank Gutchall up with a padded
cell was that I wanted to know whether or not the future could be
altered. I have it on experimental authority that it can be. There must
be additional dimensions of time; lines of alternate probabilities.
Something like William Seabrook's witch-doctor friend's Fan-Shaped
_Destiny_. When I brought memories of the future back to the present, I
added certain factors to the causal chain. That set up an entirely new
line of probabilities. On no notice at all, I stopped a murder and a
suicide. With thirty years to work, I can stop a world war. I'll have
the means to do it, too."

"The means?"

"Unlimited wealth and influence. Here." Allan picked up a sheet and
handed it to his father. "Used properly, we can make two or three
million on that, alone. A list of all the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and
Belmont winners to 1970. Th