Power to hurl the whole world into chaos. Power to make and break any man, or thing, or institution that stood before him.

I tried another angle.

'But how do you know the machine will work?'

'I have ample proof,' said J.R. 'The other papers ridiculed Dr. Ackerman, while we presented his announcement at face value. That is why he is giving us an exclusive franchise to the purchase and use of his invention. It's costing us plenty of money – a barrel of money – but we're going to make two barrels of money out of it.'

I shrugged my shoulders.

'O.K.,' I said. 'Go ahead. I don't see why the hell you called me in.'

'Because,' beamed J.R., 'you're going to make the first trip in the time machine!'

'What!' I yelled.

J.R. nodded. 'You and a photographer. Herb Harding. I called you in first. You leave tomorrow morning. Five hundred years into the future for a starter. Get pictures. Come back and write your story. We'll spring it in the Sunday paper. Whole front-page layout. What does the city look like five hundred years from now? What changes have been made? Who's mayor? What are the women wearing in the fall of 2450?'

He grinned at me.

'And you might say, too, that the Standard no longer is published. Whether it's the truth or not, you know. Old Johnson will go hog wild when he reads that in your story.'

I could have refused, of course, but if I had, he would have sent somebody else and tied the can on me. Even in 1950, despite a return to prosperity that beggared the flushest peak of 1929, good jobs in the newspaper field were not so easy to pick up.

So I said I'd go, and half an hour later I found myself getting just a bit excited about being one of the first men to travel into time. For I wouldn't be the very first. Doc Ackerman had traveled ahead a few years in his own machine, often enough and far enough to prove the thing would work.