Man's Last Innocence

The Time Patrol ensures the existence of the Danellians. Jack Havig's group ensures the existence of the Star Masters. However, the Patrol must ensure that Hiroshima happens on schedule whereas Havig's group knows that such events cannot be prevented. Thus, their job is easier than the Patrol's.

Havig:

"...was twelve when the nuclear thunderbolts slew two cities and man's last innocence."
-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), II, p. 20.

Such a passage in this novel is striking because innocence lost is the overarching theme of the Time Patrol series. See here.

I will probably quote another, longer passage tomorrow but meanwhile I urge anyone who has a copy to read or reread the description of a canoeing and camping holiday in Chapter II, pp. 18-19.