Some Details In "A Slip In Time"

See here.

(i) SM Stirling addresses some issues that had not arisen in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol stories. I had thought that Patrol timecycles were limited to any point on or above Earth or in Earth orbit but Stirling shows us one making an interplanetary crossing. He adds that the cycle has "...four-tenths charge on the cells..." (Multiverse, p. 73). Until now, we might have been forgiven for thinking that timecycles could function indefinitely without needing to be recharged.

So how do the Exaltationists, criminals who have stolen timecycles and fled into space-time, get their vehicles recharged? I suggest that they buy whatever they need from the Neldorian bandits of the two hundred and fifth millennium.

(ii) Manse refers to Hitler, Stalin and Stantel V (p. 77). All these names should be familiar to us. Coordinator Stantel V was the Great Experimenter whose colonies reproduced past societies in the thirty eighth century ("Delenda Est" IN Time Patrol, p. 180).

(iii) On p. 72 of Multiverse, Wanda loses track of how many altered realities Manse has seen. They are four:

the Carthaginian timeline in "Delenda Est";
the alpha and beta timelines in The Shield Of Time;
this new timeline in "A Slip In Time."

(iv) A time travel story such as this involves both thought about time travel logic and knowledge of history. The author must know the history in order to know how to distort it. Unfortunately, my knowledge of the historical details is slight so I must rely on the author.