The vertigo hook

By Richard Ashby
Anyone still in doubt as to who won the Civil War ought to read this story. It gives a definite if entirely unsuspected answer.
Even among those who accept time travel as at least a theoretical possibility, there exists a tendency to regard this unseen fourth dimension as something which moves back and forth along a single track. However, now and again some ingenious soul arises with a suggestion that time may move in other directions as well. Not since Murray Leinster's memorable Sidewise in Time have we met such a scramble as this.
It was a long way in time and dimension from his friendly home seas and the Irritant was hungry and ill-humored. The voids about him looked cold, unrelieved by any twinkling of tasty intellect. Not even the flicker of an edible consciousness for eons around. Crossly the Irritant baited a line and cast it in all directions. The bait was a tangled skein of thoughts about Conflict. The hook, a hard and slender curve of sharpened Vertigo.
He began trolling through the blankness of Time....
The Major in Air Corps blues pulled a bound sheaf of papers from his smart brief and slid them across the table. Of course, Ed, my say-so can pet pretty damn lost between here and the Pentagon but I think you're a cinch for the job.
He plucked the short cigarette from between his thin lips and snubbed it out in the overflowing petri-dish that served as an ashtray. And —Major Hall cocked a speculative eye at his friend— I can't think of a better way for you to get this joint out of the red.
Quicker, you mean—not better. Ed Wilkes riffled through the specification booklet. Lump this for me, huh?
Right. But first you tell me something, chum. Why should you, an M.I.T. honor grad—a laddie with more degrees than the Kremlin has Reds—bury yourself down here in the mouldering South, presiding angel over the destiny of an insignificant little college?
He waved his hand in an encompassing gesture that pointed up the stained lab table, the cracks in the wall and ceiling, the general air of save and make do that characterized the entire campus. Insignificant and crumbling even when Lincoln was president.