Transcriber's note.
This etext was produced from Fantastic UniverseScience Fiction July 1959. Extensive research did not uncover anyevidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed.

Crossroads of Destiny

by

H. Beam Piper

Readers who remember the Hon. Stephen Silk, diplomat extraordinary, inLone Star Planet (FU, March 1957), later published as A Planet ForTexans (Ace Books), will find the present story a challengingdeparture—this possibility that the history we know may not beabsolute....

CROSSROADS OF DESTINY

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

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

One was an Army officer, with the insignia and badges of a StaffIntelligence colonel. Next to him was a man of about my own age, withsandy hair and a bony, Scottish looking face, who sat staring silentlyinto a highball which he held in both hands. Across the aisle, anelderly man, who could have been a lawyer or a banker, was smoking acigar over a glass of port, and beside him sat a plump and slightly toowell groomed individual who had a tall colorless drink, probablygin-and-tonic. The fifth man, separated from him by a vacant chair,seemed to be dividing his attention between a book on his lap and theconversation, in which he was taking no part. I sat down beside thesandy-haired man; as I did so and rang for the waiter, the colonel wassaying:

"No, that wouldn't. I can think of a better one. Suppose you haveColumbus get his ships from Henry the Seventh of England and sail underthe English instead of the Spanish flag. You know, he did try to getEnglish backing, before he went to Spain, but King Henry turned himdown. That could be changed."

I pricked up my ears. The period from 1492 to the Revolution is myspecial field of American history, and I knew, at once, the enormousdifference that would have made. It was a moment later that I realizedhow oddly the colonel had expressed the idea, and by that time the plumpman was speaking.

"Yes, that would work," he agreed. "Those kings made decisions, most ofthe time, on whether or not they had a hangover, or what some courtfavorite thought." He got out a notebook and pen and scribbled briefly."I'll hand that to the planning staff when I get to New York. That'sHenry the Seventh, not Henry the Eighth? Right. We'll fix it so thatColumbus will catch him when he's in a good humor."

That was too much. I turned to the man beside me.

"What goes on?" I asked. "Has somebody invented a time machine?"

He looked up from the drink he was contemplating and gave me a grin.

"Sounds like it, doesn't it? Why, no; our friend here is getting up atelevision program. Tell the gentleman about it," he urged the plump manacross the aisle.

The waiter arrived at that moment. The plump man, who seemed to needlittle urging, waited until I had ordered a drink and then began tellingme what a positively sensational idea it was.

"We're calling it Crossr