Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net YOUR TIME IS UP BY WALT SHELDON _The Colonel was a career man; and knowing what would happen within his lifetime promised to be an invaluable asset.... But he had never heard of that ancient legend of Faust...._ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, June 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] At first I thought it was just another wrong number. Well, it was, in a sense--but not the kind of wrong number I thought it was. The ringing signal burred against my ear in the usual way, then there was a click, and somebody said, "Office of Historical Research. Zon Twenty speaking." "Oh. 'Scuse me," I said. "I must have dialed wrong." That was euphemism--misplaced loyalty, maybe. I didn't dial the wrong number, and I knew it. But high brass had installed a new automatic dialing system in the Pentagon as an economy measure, and it produced so many wrong numbers and entanglements that I think it actually must have cost more money in the long run than the old-fashioned live operator system--but then that shouldn't surprise you if you've ever been connected with the military. I was about to hang up after my apology. The voice on the other end said: "Wait! Did you say--_dialed_?" "Sure," I said. "Then--" and he seemed surprised, if not downright startled--"what kind of a phone are you speaking from?" "Huh?" I said. "What kind? The regular kind. Phone, desk, dial, M-1--or whatever the Army calls it." This time his voice went off like a small bomb. "The _Army_?" he said. "Sure," I said. "What's the matter with the Army?" And thought: Navy or Air Force type, no doubt. Our allies. Have to put up with them in the Pentagon. Have to put up with a lot of things--even being Colonel Lawrence Boggs didn't save you from a snafu dialling system. I thought: somebody is out to needle armchair colonels this week. I'll play around with it for a while, maybe find out who's got the sense of humor. The voice said, "Look here, are you joking with me?" "Perish it," I said. "But this talk about--about _dial_ phones. About _armies_. Why, you sound like one of those historical tri-vids about the twentieth century!" I smiled, without too much humor, shook my head at the phone, and said, "Look, fellow, come off it, will you? I haven't got time to play games." I hoped he wasn't some general or equivalent rank in a pixie mood. "Wait!" he said. "Wait--please--don't think off! Tell me, what year is it? Where you are, I mean." "What year? It's 1955, of course." "Why," he said, "this is remarkable!" "It is?" "Do you know what I think has happened? A quantum inversion." "Beg pardon?" I said.