Our Children's Children by Clifford D. Simak

does. Consider this—just five hundred years ahead lies the invasion from outer space. Yes, I know, because of the second time track we have thrown you on, it may not happen, but our scholars think it will, they’re almost sure it will. So why should you move forward to meet it? Why not go back with us? You’ve got a five-hundred-year margin. You could make use of it. You could go back, not in a hurry as we’ll be going, but over the course of a number of years. Why not leave Earth empty and go back to make a new beginning? It would be a fresh start for the human race. New lands to develop.…”
    â€œThis is sheer insanity!” shouted Douglas. “If we, your ancestors, left, you’d not be up there to start with and.…”
    â€œYou’re forgetting what he explained to us,” said Williams, “about a different time track.”
    Douglas sat down. “I wash my hands of it,” he said. “I’ll have no more to do with it.”
    â€œWe couldn’t go back with you,” said Sandburg. “There are too many of us and.…”
    â€œNot with us. Like us. Together there would be far too many of us. There are too many of you now. Here is the chance, if you will take it, to reduce your population to more acceptable numbers. We go back twenty million years. Half of you go back nineteen million years, the other half eighteen million years. Each group of us would be separated by a million years. We’d not interfere with one another.”
    â€œThere is one drawback,” said Williams. “We’d not be like you. We would have a disastrous impact on mankind. We’d use up the coal, the iron.…”
    â€œNot,” said Gale, “if you had our philosophy, our viewpoint, our technologies.…”
    â€œYou would give these things to us? The fusion power.…”
    â€œIf you were going back,” said Gale, “we’d insist on it.”
    The President rose. “I think,” he said, “we have reached a point where we must stop. There are many things that must be done. We thank you, Mr. Gale, for coming to us and bringing along your lovely daughter. I wonder if we might have the privilege, later, of talking further with you.”
    â€œCertainly,” said Gale. “It would be a pleasure. There are others of us that you should be talking with, men and women who know far more than I do about many aspects of the situation you should be informed on.”
    â€œWould it be agreeable to the two of you,” asked the President, “to be my house guests? I’d be glad to put you up.”
    Alice Gale spoke for the first time. She clapped her hands together, delighted. “You mean here in the White House?”
    The President smiled. “Yes, my dear, in the White House. We’d be very glad to have you.”
    â€œYou must pardon her,” her father said. “It happens that the White House is a special interest of hers. She has studied it. She has read everything about it she can lay her hands on. Its history and its architecture, everything about it.”
    â€œWhich,” said the President, “is a great compliment to us.”

12
    The people still were marching from the door, but now there were military policemen to direct them either right or left, to keep the mouth of the tunnel free for those who came pressing on behind, moving in tight ranks, and others to hold back the crowds of curious sightseers who had flocked into the area. A bullhorn voice bawled out directions and when the bullhorn fell silent, the tiny chatter of a radio could be heard, a radio left on in one of the hundreds of cars parked up and down the street, some of them against the curb, others—in a fine display of the disrespect of property—pulled up onto lawns. Military trucks and personnel carriers trundled down the street, halted long enough to take on a load of refugees, then went roaring off. But