I would have tried something stronger than beer, but I knew if I mixed drinks I'd get sick, so finally I gave up.

Louie asked me if there was something wrong, and I said no, there wasn't, but before I left I shook hands with Louie and said good-by. If I had been drunk, Louie wouldn't have thought a thing of it, but I could see he was surprised I acted that way when he knew I was sober as the daylight.

Just as I was going out the door I met Jimmy Langer coming in. Jimmy worked for the Standard and was a good newspaperman, but mean and full of low-down tricks. We were friends, of course, and had worked on lots of stories together, but we always watched one another pretty close. There was never any telling what Jimmy might be up to.

'Hi, Jimmy,' I said.

And Jimmy did a funny thing. He didn't say a word. He just looked right at me and laughed into my face.

It took me so by surprise I didn't do anything until he was inside the Dutchman's, and then I walked down the street. But at the corner I stopped, wondering if I hadn't better go back and punch Jimmy's nose. I hadn't liked the way he laughed at me.

The time-machine device was installed in a plane because, Doc Ackerman told us, it wouldn't be wise to try to do much traveling at ground level. A fellow might travel forward a hundred years or so and find himself smack in the middle of a building. Or the ground might rise or sink and the time machine would be buried or left hanging in the air. The only safe way to travel in time, Doc warned us, was to do it in a plane.

The plane was squatting in a pasture a short distance from Doc's Laboratories, situated at the edge of the city, and a tough-looking thug carrying a rifle was standing guard over it. The plane had been guarded night and day. It was just too valuable a thing to let anyone get near it.