"Anything else?" asked Karnes after a few seconds of silence from Brittain. "Didn't it say they would have to prevent that?"
Brittain's voice was dull now. "All it said was that the records would have to be preserved. It said that things must go on exactly as before. It said that nothing must interfere with the complete development, whatever that means."
Karnes pushed his way out of the room and back towards the pilot's 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.