As the Time Patrol series progresses, we gain a more sophisticated understanding of the work of the Patrol.
At the end of "Delenda Est," two Patrolmen have counter-intervened in a battle of the Second Punic War so the timeline has been restored. End of story. I did wonder, "What if people living in this version of history following Rome's destruction of Carthage make different decisions or if random events have different outcomes?"
In The Shield Of Time, two attempts are needed to correct a chaotic causality violation, and the Patrol had made preliminary studies, suspecting that something like this might occur.
In "Star Of The Sea," a divergent timeline has been averted but that is not the end of the story:
"...you must watch over events; make certain they continued on the [preferred] course; no doubt intervene, most carefully, now and then, here and there: until at last they were out of the unstable space-time zone and could safely be left to themselves." (p. 629)
I am fascinated by the image of events first in, then "...out of the unstable space-time zone..." What can that mean? A space-time zone must be a four-dimensional space, comprising our familiar three spatial dimensions plus that additional direction that we experience as time. But there are several reasons why it is wrong to visualize our spatial universe as moving through that four dimensional space along the temporal axis. Our universe is regarded as extending, not moving, in that direction. Thus, events are four dimensional objects. If the instability of the zone means that these objects can change, then, I argue, a second temporal dimension is involved. Time is the relationship between a state changed from and a state changed to. This is a relationship of "before" and "after," thus a temporal relationship.
But, whatever their logical or philosophical implications, Anderson's references to unstable space-time provide a fascinating background to his stories of time travelers who can change the past.
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