students--there will be explorations and attempts at colonization on
Mars and Venus. You believe that, Doctor?"

"Oh, unreservedly. I'm not supposed to talk about it, but I did some
work on the Philadelphia Project, myself. I'd say that every major
problem of interplanetary flight had been solved before the first
robot rocket was landed on Luna."

"Yes. And when Mars and Venus are colonized, there will be the same
historic situations, at least in general shape, as arose when the
European powers were colonizing the New World, or, for that matter,
when the Greek city-states were throwing out colonies across the
Aegean. That's the sort of thing we call projecting the past into the
future through the present."

Hauserman nodded. "But how about the details? Things like the
assassination of a specific personage. How can you extrapolate to a
thing like that?"

"Well...." More "memories" were coming to the surface; he tried to
crowd them back. "I do my projecting in what you might call
fictionalized form; try to fill in the details from imagination. In
the case of Khalid, I was trying to imagine what would happen if his
influence were suddenly removed from Near Eastern and Middle Eastern,
affairs. I suppose I constructed an imaginary scene of his
assassination...."

He went on at length. Mohammed and Noureed were common enough names.
The Middle East was full of old U. S. weapons. Stoning was the
traditional method of execution; it diffused responsibility so that no