Transcriber's 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.