TO CONQUER THE FUTURE, THEY TRIED TO CHANGE THE PAST! When T.E.R.R.A.'s Resident Agent in ancient Crete discovers an inscription written in that language one thousand years before it came into existence, he immediately suspects time-tampering by the minions of EMPIRE. Webley, the sardonic fifteen-pound shape-changing symbiote, and Hannibal Fortune, both Special Agents for the Temporal Energy Restructure and Repair Agency, are sent back to investigate. What they find daunts even this dauntless pair. For, far to the west and ten thousand years before even the semi-legendary Crete arose, lies a thriving civilization ruled by an enigmatic god-king named Kronos. Here, on an Earth still young enough to be molded to whatever destiny its ruler has in mind, Kronos, whoever or whatever he is, has become the creator of a mighty race ... a race poised to stamp out all future humanity by destroying the ancestors of homo sapiens! Fortune, one of the few agents with the coveted License to Tamper, must restore Earth's history - no matter what it takes. Failure means Kronos will change the shape of things to come and shatter Earth's time-line forever! But Webley has a suggestion or two that just might save humanity's bacon . if only he can distract the debonair Fortune from the beautiful young priestess he has just met!