Upstairs Of The Turning Point

"Delenda Est."

Everard, Van Sarawak and Deirdre are at:

"'About the time of Christ? Then we're still upstairs of the turning point.'

"'Yeh. And we still have to find out what it was.'" (7, p. 217)

Van Sarawak suggests recruiting help at:

"'...some Patrol office in the farther past.'" (ibid.)

However, Everard thinks that he can locate the key event there and then by hypnotizing Deirdre.

When I first read this passage in the early 1960s, I thought that they should travel to the farther past without delay because at any moment other Patrol agents might succeed in deleting the Carthaginian timeline with Everard and Van Sarawak still in it. But, of course, that was a wrong way of thinking. The deletion of the Carthaginian timeline has to occur not at any moment during Everard's and Van Sarawak's conversation about the time of Christ but earlier than that at some still to be identified turning point during the Second Punic War. Either the deletion has already happened or it has not. If they are in a timeline where that deletion has not happened, then they can stay as long as they need to in that timeline before travelling into the farther past.