“We have?”

With a ponderous nod of his head: “Yes. But we are moving in different directions through time. You are moving back toward The War. I am moving forward toward The End.”

“The War? The End?”

“Back and forth are relative terms in time travel. But the truth is that we have met before. You will come to those places in time and remember that I told you. If you live.”

“You’re trying to destroy the fusion reactor,” I said.

He smiled, and it was not a pleasant thing to see. “I am trying to destroy your entire race.”

“I’m here to stop you.”

“You may succeed.” He placed a slight, ironic stress on may.

“Ormazd says that I will… that I already have succeeded.” I didn’t mention the part about being killed. Somehow, I couldn’t. That would make it true. That would give him strength and rob me of it.

“Ormazd knows many things,” Ahriman said slowly, “but he tells you only a few of them. He knows, for example, that if I prevent you from stopping me this time…”

This time! Then there have been other times!

“…then not only will I destroy your entire race of people, but I will smash the fabric of the space-time continuum and annihilate Ormazd himself.”

“You want to kill us all.”

Those red, pain-wracked eyes bored into me. “Kill every one of you, yes. I want to bring down the pillars of the universe. Everything will die. Stars, planets, galaxies… everything.” His massive fists clenched. He believed what he said. He was making me believe it.

“But why? Why do you want to…”

He silenced me with a stare. “If Ormazd has not told you, why should I?”

I tried to see past his words, but my mind struck an utterly implacable wall.

“I will tell you this much,” Ahriman whispered.

“This fusion reactor of yours is a nexus point in your race’s development. If you make the fusion process work, you will be expanding out to the stars within a generation. I will not allow you to accomplish that.”

“I don’t understand.”

“How could you?” He leaned closer to me, and I could smell the odor of ashes and death upon him. “This fusion machine, this CTR as you call it, is the key to your race’s future. If it is successful, fusion will supply limitless energy for you. Wealth and plenty for all. Your people could stop playing with their puny chemical rockets and start building real starships. They could expand throughout the galaxy.”

“They have done so,” I realized.

“Yes they have. But if I can change the nexus here, at this point in time, if I can destroy that fusion reactor…” He smiled again. And I shuddered.

I tried to pull myself together. “The failure of one machine can’t kill the entire human race.”

“Yes, it can, thanks to the maniac nature of your kind. When the fusion reactor explodes…”

“It can’t explode!” I snapped.

“Of course not. Not under ordinary circumstances. But I have access to extraordinary means. I can create a sudden surge of power from the lasers. I can cause a detonation of the lithium shielding that surrounds the reactor’s ignition chamber. Instead of a microgram of deuterium being fused and giving off a puff of energy, a quarter ton of lithium and heavier metals will explode.”

“They can’t…”

“Instead of a tiny, controlled, man-made star radiating energy in a controlled flow, I will create an artificial supernova, a lithium bomb. The explosion will destroy Ann Arbor totally. The fallout will kill millions of people from Detroit to New York.”

I sagged back, stunned.

“Even if your leaders are wise enough to recognize that this is an accident and not a nuclear attack, even if they refrain from launching their missiles at their enemies, your people will react violently against fusion power. Their earlier protests which closed all the uranium fission power plants will seem like child’s play compared to their reaction to this disaster. There will be an end to all nuclear research everywhere. You will never get fusion power. Never.”

“Even so, we will survive.”

“Will you? I have all the time in the world to work with. I can be patient. As the years go by, your growing population will demand more and more energy. Your mighty nations will struggle against each other for possession of petroleum, coal, food resources. There will be war, inevitably. And for war, you have fusion devices that do work — H-bombs.”

“Armageddon,” I said.

He nodded that massive head in triumph. “At the time when you should be expanding outward toward the stars, you will destroy yourselves with nuclear war. This planet will be scoured clean of life. The fabric of space-time itself will be so ruptured that the entire continuum will collapse and die. Armageddon, indeed.”

I wanted to stop him, to silence him. I wanted to kill him just as he had killed Aretha. I leaped for his throat, snarling. He was real, no hologram. And he was incredibly strong. He brushed me aside easily, knocking me to the floor as if I were a child.

Standing over me like the dark force of doom, he said in his harsh, whispering voice, “Despite what Ormazd has told you, I will succeed in this. You will die, Orion. Here. You are trapped in this chamber, while I shall destroy your fusion machine.”

“But why?” I asked, climbing slowly back to the couch. “Why do you want to wipe out the human race?”

He stood for a moment, glaring at me with those burning eyes. “You really don’t know, do you? He never told you… or he erased your memory of it.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Why do you hate the human race?”

“Because you wiped out my race,” Ahriman answered, his harsh voice nearly strangling on the words. “Millennia ago, your people killed mine. You annihilated my entire species. I am the only one of my kind left alive, and I will avenge my race by destroying yours — and your masters as well.”

The strength left me. I sat weakly on the couch, unable to challenge him, unable to move.

“And now, good-bye,” Ahriman said. “I have work to do before the first test run of your fusion reactor. You will remain here…” He gestured around the tiny room. It had no doors or windows. No exits or entrances of any kind. How did we get in here? I wondered.

“If I succeed, it will all be over in a few hours,” Ahriman said. “Time itself will begin to falter and the universe will fall in on itself like a collapsing balloon. If I fail, well…” that ghastly smile again, “…you will never know it. This chamber will be your tomb. Or, more properly, your crematorium.”

“Where are we?” I asked.

“Thirty miles underground, in a temporary bubble of safety and comfort created by warping the energies of the atoms around us. Think about that as you burn — you are only a step away from the house inAnn Arbor. One small step for a man, if he truly understands the way the universe is constructed.” He turned abruptly and walked through the wall and disappeared.