compartment. What the pilot had to say was no news to Karnes.

"Radio from New York says that a bomb missed LA and hit the ocean.
That was a close one."

Karnes nodded silently, and leaned back in the stewardess' seat to
think.

* * * * *

No wonder Brittain had been so anxious to get out of New York.

New York would be destroyed, but that was inevitable. The thing that
had bothered him, his dilemma, was solved.

Was this the real Earth that he lived in, or a museum that had been
set up by the Galactics? If it was old Earth, then man would solve his
present problems and go on to solve the problem of time travel and
interstellar transportation. The present war would be just another
little incident in the far past, like the battles of Gettysburg and
Agincourt.

* * * * *

And if it were the museum Earth? No difference. For the Galactics had
decided not to interfere. They had decided to let the race of Earth go
on as it was--exactly as it had gone before. It made no difference,
really. _No difference at all._ A perfect duplication of an original
_was_ the original, in every meaningful way.

"Funny," said the pilot abruptly, "I'm not getting any signal from New
York."

Karnes took a deep breath and bit at his lower lip. But he did not
look toward the horror that was New York. The city was gone, but the
world was there--solid and real!

_You'd better expand your museum a little bit, boys_, he thought.
_We'll need to include Mars and Venus before very long. And then the
stars._

* * * * *

End of Project Gutenberg's Instant of Decision, by Gordon Randall Garrett

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