Science fiction giant Keith Laumer delivers a fast-paced, wry
adventure of time travel and twisted realities in three classic
interwoven tales as a regular Joe from our Earth fights against an
alternate version of himself who has become a tyrant in an alternate
timeline.
American Brion Bayard is abducted on the streets of Stockholm, and
thrust into what he believes is a truck. He's relieved to find his
captors very apologetic, and very British--that is, until they began
speaking about nations of which Bayard has never heard.
His captors were from Earth, yes. But not his Earth.
Turns out that there are countess parallel Earths, each different, where
history has taken every possible turn--and there are even more
uninhabitable worlds, destroyed by the misuse of cross-time travel.
Bayard discovers that the Earth he has now been thrust into, the Earth
of the Imperium, is at war with a dangerously aggressive parallel Earth
that has taken a wrong turn somewhere in time and whose ruler is...a
parallel version of Bayard himself! Now Bayard's mission is clear: to
prevent his alternate self from destroying the new plane of reality that
he now calls home, the Imperium.