In the 25 years that he had lived in the 20th century he had turned from a man of 65 to a healthy, robust 40. For a long time he had lived in fear that the dreaded arms of the C.D. would reach out for him, and that he would stand face to face with terror-inspiring Crane. But he had never met anyone who seemed to be a C.D., a Criminal Destroyer. Sometimes he felt the avenging sword of the Komitet hanging over his head. There were some statesmen and philosophers mentioned in the newspapers whose ideas seemed to indicate a 25th century origin, but he avoided them in the fear that they might be plants to draw out the illegals. It was probably that the C.D. would never find out the deception, and if they did there was little chance of locating him among the two billion people on Home Planet. "You have to make a living somehow," the agent persisted. "I know nothing but engineering," Donovan said, "and that I will never do." "Maybe there's some other field in which you could use engineering skills." He thought for a moment, and then reached into his briefcase. "I picked this up on a newsstand. You might like it." Donovan glanced at the magazine's cover. "It's the latest thrill--scientific fiction. Maybe with your engineering knowledge you could write a story or two." * * * * * When the agent left, Donovan read through the magazine, then went out to look up other stories of the same nature. One story offered a time-travel theory which was absurdly inaccurate. Another purported to deal with the inhabitants of Mars, none of which looked at all the way the writers imagined them to be. Donovan read as many as he could find, and was fascinated by the hopeless incompetence and scientific inaccuracy of the so-called writers. The time-travel story was laughable; even a child could produce a far more exciting tale by describing the Watson-Gorshevich experiments that lead to the discovery of repetitive time-cycles back in 2364. _Why not_, he thought to himself. _Why not write these stories of the future? Who could do them better than a man who had come from the future?_ These were not engineering journals where accuracy was required, nor would anyone ever act upon the scientific discoveries he might record. Above all, no one would attempt to build any machines which would immediately attract the attention of the C.D. He would do nothing which would in the slightest way affect historic development. Pressed by the need for money, and fascinated by the possibilities in science fiction, Donovan began to write a story. He employed a pen-name, and avoided the general theory of retrograde-cycle travel backward above time, but limited himself to travelling spirally into the future. He described the mechanism he himself would have to produce in order to get back to Blascomb for anabolism-correction, and produced a fanciful tale regarding life in the year 3,000. The letter from the editor came within a week.