* * * * *
"Well," Dugan began, "perhaps it isn't very original at that, but
it's what you might call provocative. The scene is the Twenty-third
Century--over three hundred years from now. At a great American
university, physicists have devised a--a Time Machine. It's a startling
invention, of course, just as the invention of electric light was
startling; but its operation is based on sane physical laws--"
"Never mind the explanations," Belcher interrupted. "We've all alibied
a Time Machine at one time or another. Land-sakes! You don't even have
to any more. You just write 'Time Machine' and the readers take the
rest for granted."
"When the story begins," Dugan continued, "the machine has been in use
for several years. But for the first time it's to be used for literary
purposes. This is because back in the first half of the Twentieth
Century there lived a great writer. He was so great that modern critics
call him the New Shakespeare. He's called that not only for his genius,
but because, like the original Shakespeare, almost nothing is known of
his life."