Mills called me and asked me to take a short-time appointment, now filling Cyril’s place. I told him I was honored.

I worked there for about four months, trying to empty one large file drawer where Tony had stashed stories that were just not quite good enough to be published, but still too good to have been rejected. Each story had a special problem: one, for example, by Robert Bloch, “That Hell-Bound Train,” was an absolutely fine piece of work that just didn’t have a usable ending. It was my job, among other things, to come up with such an ending and persuade the writer to write it. I developed a great respect for the editors—chief among them John W. Campbell and Horace L. Gold—I had known and quarreled with a lot, an awful lot.

One of the things Bob Mills asked me to do right off was give him a story by me for the tenth anniversary issue of the magazine. I agreed, and promptly forgot about it as I wrestled with the thick inventory of science fiction written by people I much admired but which always lacked some essential quality or passage.

And then Mills came to my desk at 4:45 p.m. on a Wednesday as I was getting ready to leave, and asked me where it was.

I got into my coat and stared at him. Where what was?

“The story for the anniversary issue. It goes to bed tomorrow. Thursday morning. Dead deadline, Phil!”

In an emergency, my mother had taught me, always lie. “Oh, it’s home,” I said. “I’ll bring it in with me tomorrow morning. I’m pretty sure you’ll like it.”

“How long is it?” Mills wanted to know. “I hope it’ll fit the book. We can’t use much more than about six thousand words.”