Hannibal Fortune shifted his grip on the sword and danced widdershins around his bearded opponent, keeping an eye on him over the top of the copper-clad wooden shield. The other man feinted with the blade, then jabbed suddenly at Fortune's exposed thigh. Fortune grinned and dropped the shield enough to deflect the jab. Despite his lack of experience with it, the handsome, debonair agent was beginning to enjoy wielding the cumbersome bronze blade. It was a man's weapon, which was more than could really be said of the laser hand of his own time. Spotting an opening in his opponent's defense, he closed the gap quickly and brought his sword around in a singing arc, intending to lay the flat of the blade along the man's ludicrously helmeted head.

But the bearded one had other ideas. Before he fully realized what was happening, Hannibal saw the opposing shield pivot and blur. Having committed himself to the swinging stroke, he was unable to counter the heavy edge of the shield as it crashed into the side of his own helmet.

Fortune hit the floor heavily, his head ringing. He rolled over and gazed painfully up at his opponent. "What in blazes do you call that?"

"Shield attack," replied d'Kaamp crisply. "Don't overlook it. A shield can be a very good offensive weapon if handled right." The instructor threw down his gear and eased the plumed helmet off his head. His hair, like his beard, was almost white. "That's enough for this morning. I'll meet you back here after lunch." Ramrod straight, d'Kaamp marched from the training room into his office.

Fortune picked himself up from the floor, thankful that Webley hadn't witnessed his inelegant introduction to shield play. The sharp-tongued symbiote had seen egg on his face too many times already; there was no point in giving him another opportunity to exercise his wit. Ruefully, he returned his weapons to their place on the wall and dusted himself off.

He eased himself out of the barbaric battle dress and took a quick shower. Then, in his own clothes, he entered the long, curving corridor outside, jumped lightly onto the acceleramp and rode the half mile to the commissary. T.E.R.R.A. Control was a planet in its own right: a hollow planet populated by ten thousand specialists whose job was to back up men such as Hannibal Fortune. At the exact center of the galaxy, it revolved about no sun; rather, it was often said that the galaxy revolved about T.E.R.R.A. Control.

And T.E.R.R.A. Control, today, revolved about Hannibal Fortune--or so it seemed from the way he was greeted, saluted, smiled at and catered to in the cafeteria. Even the waitresses seemed to know when a Special Agent was being honed for his next perilous assignment, and Hannibal Fortune had been a favorite with most of the human females in the organization for the better part of his dozen years with Temporal Entropy Restructure and Repair Agency. Unlike several others of his calling, Fortune looked like a Special Agent. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a rakish face and a devil-may-care glint in his eyes, he was the type of man whose only trouble with women was in keeping their schedules straight. It was an odd role, he sometimes reflected, for one who'd started out to be a history professor.

The present adventure had begun two days before, when Fortune and his symbiotic sidekick had been called into Pohl Tausig's office. Tausig was a bulky man of indeterminate age who, like d'Kaamp, affected a beard. Tausig's, however, was jet black, as were his eyes, which peered from a deceptively mild face. Fortune had heard rumors that Tausig had been an academic dean before T.E.R.R.A. had been formed in 2558. His manner was faintly professorial. Of course, there was also the rumor that Tausig had commanded a Galactic Federation flagship a dozen years before that; his manner included unmistakable overtones of the professional militarist.

"Sit down, gentlemen," he invited, in a voice like a temple gong.

Fortune sat down, Webley's fifteen pounds yoked comfortably across his shoulders.

"Earth again," said the Operations Chief. "When?"

"Fifteen-oh-nine B.C.," Tausig said. "Harkness and Morag are the Resident Team, Minoan Empire, Crete. You're familiar with the area?"

"Of course. But fifteen hundred B.C.? That's practically prehistory for Earth."

Tausig nodded. "Harkness found this ... He leaned forward and passed a rectangle of blue-green metal to the agent. It was about twelve by eighteen inches, with a hole in each corner, as if it had once been mounted on a building. Inscribed on it were several lines of ornate letters.

"Greek?"

"Kline Greek--commercial Greek. First used about 450 B.C."

"Then Harkness found it almost eleven centuries before it had any right to exist."

"Your grasp of simple arithmetic is comforting," Tausig said dryly, passing over a thin sheet of paper. "Our Linguistics Section prepared a translation."

I, KRONOS, PROCLAIM ETERNAL LOYALTY TO YOLARABAS, THE GOLDEN GODDESS, THE MOTHER OF MANKIND WHO WILL CAUSE MY PEOPLE TO PROSPER AND MULTIPLY AND FILL THE EARTH.

"'Kronos,'" Fortune mused. "Whoever he is, he's practically advertising his presence. I wonder which one of Malik's boys it is this time?"

"Harkness dug it out of a burial mound. As you can see, from the extent of oxidation, it had been untouched for centuries. Our chemistry experts estimate a minimum of two thousand years, assuming that it started out as pure copper. That coincides with the beginning of the Bronze Age, around 3400 B.C., give or take a century. It's likely you'll find your man somewhere in that period ... or even before. I have a feeling that Empire's reaching way back this time. I want you to find out just how far back, who Kronos is, what he's up to..."

"...and repair whatever damage he's done," Fortune finished. "Webley, what do you think?"

The symbiote smiled, extruding three eyes to better peer at the metal plaque. "Looks genuine to me. Of course, I suspect your interest in the Golden Goddess is more than merely intellectual."

"Religion is a wonderful thing," Fortune said piously. "The earliest Resident Team we have on Earth," Tausig continued, ignoring the exchange between Fortune and his partner, "is in 1800 B.C. They've located the burial mound but have been instructed not to touch it. They reportno trace of Kronos or the goddess Yolarabas in the folk-tales of that time. I have a feeling you're going to have to go way back. The techs are already working on a duty kit for you. Control agrees your best cover will be as a mercenary. You'll get what cerebrofield indoctrination we can give you, but in that time period it's not much. d'Kaamp is expecting you for weapons training. Good luck."

Although Tausig had presented the facts in a completely emotionless manner, worthy of both an academician and a military commander, there was no doubting the urgency of the situation and the potential danger to the time-structure which an incautious time traveler could do. Empire's men, Fortune knew, were all well aware of the personal dangers of temporal displacement, and would rigorously follow the rules which pertained to their own safety. They would not, for instance, attempt to exist twice in the same period of time--double occupancy was the surest road to instant oblivion, for it put too much strain on the time-line. Just as Nature (at the bottom of a miles-deep planetary atmosphere) is said to abhor a vacuum, Time refuses to tolerate a double. This intolerance of temporal carbon-copies is indiscriminate--anything or anyone attempting to coexist in a time already occupied by itself simply ceases to exist. Empire's agents also observed the second great law of self-preservation: they scrupulously avoided the past history of their own planets oforigin, lest they unwittingly destroy a bit of germ-plasm which generations later might result in their own existence, for to do so would run the risk of destroying themselves.

No, the Empire agent who called himself Kronos would not dare endanger himself. Conceivably, Kronos might not even intend to endanger Earth's time-line; but Fortune and all of T.E.R.R.A. knew that an accidental threat could be every bit as lethal as one which was consciously and maliciously executed.

Fortune felt neither surprised nor honored by the Kronos assignment. It had been his fascination, as a historian, with this out-of-the-way planet which had caused T.E.R.R.A. to seek him out, and resulted in his becoming a Special Agent. At first, he'd found it hard to believe the opportunity presented to him was not in jest--but a chance to live inside the historical context of his favorite planet wasn't to be laughed off. He'd heard rumors, of course, that the GalacticFederation had acquired a time machine of some sort, but only after he'd seen it in action did he fully believe.

Become a T.E.R.R.A. agent? Certainly! What do I have to do?

His first assignment--as Resident Agent in central Europe during the time of Voltaire--had been relatively simple: Keep your eyes open. Report anything that's out of place, anything that differs from the history of the period as you knowit. We'll take it from there.

Even on that first mission, a little over twelve years ago by base-time reckoning, Webley had been his partner. He and the symbiote had picked each other from a number of possible teammates, and had built a partnership that was greater than the sum of its members. It was that simple. Webley weighed fifteen pounds, and was an organism in much the same sense that a swarm of bees can be thought of as an organism. He looked like whatever he felt like looking like--whatever shape suited his immediate needs, that's what Webley was. Usually, he was content to distribute his pliant protoplasm evenly across Fortune's shoulders, but he was also quite good as a bird, a snake, a bat, a cat, and on one occasion had passed quite nicely as a manta ray. To top it off, he was an accomplished telepath--which let him function both as a physical and mental extension of Hannibal Fortune. T.E.R.R.A. itself had come into being to answer a need.In 2548, when Lipnig and Rudnl had invented the temporal transporter, the Galactic Federation had immediately outlawed it, regarding it as a threat to the thousands of time-lines which supported objective reality. Disgruntled, Rimaud Rudnl had aligned himself with Gregor Malik, tyrant of the planet Borius, who saw the device as a means of extending his tyranny over the known universe. Malik recruited the top criminal minds from some fourteen non-Federation planets and formed Empire, an organization dedicated to galactic plunder. G.F., detecting Empire's activity, had met in secret session and created T.E.R.R.A. with the sole directive, protect base-time reality. In its fourteen years of service, T.E.R.R.A. had placed some ten thousand Resident Agents along forty-seven planetary time-lines, spanning more than forty-three centuries.

Gradually, an elite corps of Special Agents had evolved, men exceptionally well-grounded in the history of their particular planets, so adept at recognizing and correlating significant data and so good in battle situations that it would have been foolish to chain them to a single twenty year residency.

Hannibal Fortune was one of this select few who possessed the coveted License to Tamper. His specialty was Earth. The Kronos assignment, therefore, was routine.

Up to a point. Even Pohl Tausig had to admit that this was the first time a Special Agent had ever been required to step back into prehistory, where T.E.R.R.A.'s knowledge of the time consisted of nothing better than educated guesses. And, as always on these assignments, the fate of a world hung in the balance.