[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction
May 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Sidenote: Sam had led a peaceful and impecunious life--until a voice
cut in on a phone and said: Sam, this is You]
You are not supposed to believe this story, and if you ask Sam Yoder
about it, he is apt to say that it's all a lie. But Sam is a bit
sensitive about it. He does not want the question of privacy to be
raised again--especially in Rosie's hearing. And there are other
matters. But it's all perfectly respectable and straightforward.
It could have happened to anybody--well, almost anybody. Anybody, say,
who was a telephone lineman for the Batesville and Rappahannock
Telephone Company, and who happened to be engaged to Rosie, and who had
been told admiringly by Rosie that a man as smart as he was ought to
make something wonderful of himself. And, of course, anybody who'd taken
that seriously and had been puttering around on a device to make private
conversations on a party-line telephone possible, and almost had the
trick.
It began about six o'clock on July second, when Sam was up a telephone
pole near Bridge's Run. He was hunting for the place where that party
line had gone dead. He'd hooked in his lineman's phone and he couldn't
raise Central, so he was just going to start looking for the break when
his phone rang back, though the line had checked dead.
[Illustration]