of the last century, around the nineteen-fifties or thereabouts."

I began to laugh. "The nineteen-fifties! What would I do to earn a living in those days?"

He gave me a thin smile. "I guess that would be your first unsolved problem. After all, you said you wanted problems and the chance to make plans and try to make them come true."

"But why pick me?" I wanted to know.

"I like you, Gerald," he said. "I would like to see you have a decent chance. And don't flatter yourself—you wouldn't be the first one to go. You'd be in good company."

I just sat staring vacantly at him.

"I guess you could say this is your first big decision in two years," he added. "There's no hurry. You can think it over for a while."

I asked questions—lots of them—but I didn't get too many answers. Mr. Atkins explained that naturally the affair was hush-hush. After the way the Grundy Projector had been thrust so irresponsibly upon us, no one wanted any further complications. But there were some answers I could piece together both from what I already knew and the hints he dropped.

I'd been in on conferences and listened to Mr. Atkins try to figure out ways of expanding, building up our business. Each time, he'd been stymied by the Grundy Projector. If he'd bull some idea through, his competitors would see exactly how it worked out. If he didn't, they'd know that, too. And I had heard him rant when the accountants—using the Grundy Projectors, of course—would make up their inventory, sales, profit-and-loss and tax statements two years or more in advance.

That was actually what galled him. Mr. Atkins was used to making plans, calculating risks and gains, taking his chances. With the Grundy Projectors in existence, nobody could do that any more. I gathered from what he told me that there was a syndicate of men like himself backing the inventor of a genuine time machine. They didn't condemn the Grundy invention on any moral or religious or even selfish grounds. They just resented very bitterly the same thing that annoyed me—the sense of repetition.

As Mr. Atkins put it, "It's no different than reading a story and then having to relive the whole thing, anticipating each action and bit of dialogue. And that's precisely what this is. Only it's our lives, not fiction. We didn't like it, Gerald. We didn't like it at all! But we did something about the problem instead of merely complaining."

Let me say right now that I thought the solution they came up with was nonsensical and I kept searching, all the time we talked, for ways of politely turning down the offer. Escaping to to the past was a ridiculous answer. But it was just the kind of notion that would appeal to an old-fashioned character like Mr. Atkins.

I didn't tell him so, of course. I thanked him for his consideration and shook hands and felt relieved when he finally left.

My mind was made up by then. I'd back out, quit if I had to, rather than take refuge in the past to evade the future.

It wasn't until I got out of the office that I realized there was no big decision to make; it was already made for me. Either I was going to die or I was going into the past—and I wasn't going to die if I could help it. But neither did I intend going into the past if I could really help that!

When Marge realized that I wasn't merely trying to take her mind off the fatal day, she pounced on me and hugged me as though I myself had invented the time machine just to save her life!

"It's wonderful, darling!" she cried. "You were right all along! Oh, how can you forgive me for making things so unbearable for you?"

"About this idea of going into the past—" I said.

"What's the difference when we go to," she cut in, "as long as we don't have to die?"

"But I figured on telling Mr. Atkins at the last minute that all I want is a transfer—"

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