The Project Gutenberg EBook of Crossroads of Destiny, by Henry Beam Piper

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Title: Crossroads of Destiny

Author: Henry Beam Piper

Release Date: June 20, 2006 [EBook #18632]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Transcriber note: This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe
Science Fiction July 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any
evidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed.

Crossroads
of
Destiny

by

H. Beam Piper

No wonder he'd been so interested in the talk of whether our
people accepted these theories!

* * * * *

Readers who remember the Hon. Stephen Silk, diplomat extraordinary, in
LONE STAR PLANET (FU, March 1957), later published as A PLANET FOR
TEXANS (Ace Books), will find the present story a challenging
departure--this possibility that the history we know may not be
absolute....

* * * * *

CROSSROADS OF DESTINY

I still have the dollar bill. It's in my box at the bank, and I think
that's where it will stay. I simply won't destroy it, but I can think of
nobody to whom I'd be willing to show it--certainly nobody at the
college, my History Department colleagues least of all. Merely to tell
the story would brand me irredeemably as a crackpot, but crackpots are
tolerated, even on college faculties. It's only when they begin
producing physical evidence that they get themselves actively resented.

* * * * *

When I went into the club-car for a nightcap before going back to my
compartment to turn in, there were five men there, sitting together.

One was an Army officer, with the insignia and badges of a Staff
Intelligence colonel. Next to him was a man of about my own age, with
sandy hair and a bony, Scottish looking face, who sat staring silently
into a highball which he held in both hands. Across the aisle, an
elderly man, who could have been a lawyer or a banker, was smoking a