Such Interesting Neighbors

(by Jack Finney, adapted for this article)

(Where would you like to go?)

I can’t honestly say I knew from the start that there was something queer about the Hellenbeks. I did notice some strange things right away, and wondered about them, but I shrugged them off. They were nice people, I liked them, and everyone has a few odd little tricks.

We were watching from our sun-parlor windows the day they arrived; not snooping or prying, you understand, but naturally we were curious. Nell and I are pretty sociable and we were hoping a couple around our own ages would move into the new house next door.

I was just finishing breakfast — it was a Saturday and I wasn’t working — and Nell was running the vacuum cleaner over the sun-parlor rug. I heard the vacuum shut off, and Nell called out, Here they are, Al! and I ran in and we got our first look at the Hellenbeks.

He was helping her from a cab, and I got a good look at him and his wife. They seemed to be just about our ages, the man maybe thirty-two or so and his wife in her middle twenties. She was rather pretty, and he had a nice, agreeable kind of face.

Newlyweds? Nell said, a little excited.

Why?

Their clothes are all brand-new. Even the shoes. And so’s the bag.

Yeah, maybe you’re right. I watched for a second or so, then said, Foreigners, too, I think, showing Nell I was pretty observant myself.

Why do you think so?

He’s having trouble with the local currency. He was, too. He couldn’t seem to pick out the right change, and finally he held out his hand and let the driver find the right coins.

But we were wrong on both counts. They’d been married three years, we found out later, had both been born in the States, and had lived here nearly all their lives.

Furniture deliveries began arriving next door within half an hour; everything new, all bought from local merchants. We live in San Rafael, California, in a neighborhood of small houses. Mostly young people live here, and it’s a friendly, informal place. So after a while I got into an old pair of flannels and sneakers and wandered over to get acquainted and lend a hand if I could, and I cut across the two lawns. As I came up to their house, I heard them talking in the living room. Here’s a picture of Truman, he said, and I heard a newspaper rattle.

Truman, she said, kind of thoughtfully. Let’s see now; doesn’t Roosevelt come next?

No. Truman comes after Roosevelt.

I think you’re wrong, dear, she said. It’s Truman, then Roosevelt, then —

When my feet hit their front steps, the talk stopped. At the door I knocked and glanced in; they were sitting on the living-room floor, and Ted Hellenbek was just scrambling to his feet. They’d been unpacking a carton of dishes and there was a bunch of wadded-up old newspapers lying around, and I guess they’d been looking at those. Ted came to the door. He’d changed to a T-shirt, slacks and moccasins, all brand-new.

I’m Al Lewis from next door, I said. Thought maybe I could give you a hand.

Glad to know you. He pushed the door open, then stuck out his hand. I’m Ted Hellenbek, and he grinned in a nice friendly way. His wife got up from the floor, and Ted introduced us. Her name was Ann.

Well, I worked around with them the rest of the morning, helping them unpack things, and we got the place into pretty good order. While we were working, Ted told me they’d been living in South America — he didn’t say where or why — and that they’d sold everything they had down there, except the clothes they traveled in and a few personal belongings, rather than pay shipping expenses. That sounded perfectly reasonable and sensible, except that a few days later Ann told Nell their house in South America had burned down and they’d lost everything.

Maybe half an hour after I arrived, some bedding was delivered — blankets, pillows, linen, stuff like that. Ann picked up the two pillows, put cases on them, and turned toward the bedroom. Now, it was broad daylight, the bedroom door was closed, and it was made of solid wood. But Ann walked straight into that door and fell. I couldn’t figure out how she came to do it; it was as though she expected the door to open by itself or something. That’s what Ted said, too, going over to help her up. Be careful, honey, he said, and laughed a little, making a joke of it. You’ll have to learn, you know, that doors won’t open themselves.

Around eleven thirty or so, some books arrived, quite a slew of them, and all new. We were squatting on the floor, unpacking them, and Ted picked up a book, showed me the title, and said, Have you read this?

It was The Far Reaches, by a Walter Braden. No, I said. I read the reviews a week or so ago, and they weren’t so hot.

I know, Ted said, and he had a funny smile on his face. And yet it’s a great book. Just think, he went on, and shook his head a little, you can buy this now, a new copy, first edition, for three dollars. Yet in — oh, a hundred and forty years, say, a copy like this might be worth five to eight thousand dollars.

Could be, I said, and shrugged; but what kind of a remark is that? Sure, any book you want to name might be valuable someday, but why that book? And why a hundred and forty years? And why five to eight thousand dollars, particularly? Well, that’s the kind of thing I mean about the Hellenbeks. It wasn’t that anything big or dramatic or really out of the way happened that first day. It was just that every once in a while one or the other would do or say something that wasn’t quite right.

Most of the time, though, things were perfectly ordinary and normal. We talked and laughed and kidded around a lot, and I knew I was going to like the Hellenbeks and that Nelly would, too.

In the afternoon we got pretty hot and thirsty, so I went home and brought back some beer. This time Nelly came with me, met the new people, and invited them over for supper. Nelly complimented Ann on the nice things she had, and Ann thanked her and apologized, the way a woman will, because things were kind of dusty. Then she went out to the kitchen, came back with a dustcloth, and started dusting around. It was a white cloth with a small green pattern, and it got pretty dirty, and when she wiped off the window sills it was really streaked.

Then Ann leaned out the front window, shook the cloth once, and — it was clean again. I mean completely clean; the dirt, every trace of it, shook right out. She did that several times, dusting around the room and then shaking the cloth out, and it shook out white every time.

Well, Nelly sat there with her mouth hanging open, and finally she said, Where in the world did you get that dustcloth?

Ann glanced down at the cloth in her hand, then looked up at Nelly again and said, Why, it’s just an old rag, from one of Ted’s old suits. Then suddenly she blushed.

I’d have blushed too; did you ever see a man’s suit, white with a little green pattern?

Nell said, Well, I never saw a dustcloth before that would shake out perfectly clean. Mine certainly don’t.

Ann turned even redder, looking absolutely confused, and — I’d say scared. She mumbled something about cloth in South America, glanced at Ted, and then put the back of her wrist up against her forehead, and for an instant I’d have sworn she was going to cry.

But Ted got up fast, put his arm around Ann’s waist and turned her a little so her back was toward us, and said something about how she’d been working too hard and was tired. His eyes, though, as he stood looking at us over Ann’s shoulder, were hard and defiant. For a moment you almost got the feeling that it was the two of them against the world, that Ted was protecting Ann against us.

Then Nelly ran a hand admiringly over the top of the end table beside her and said how much she liked it, and Ann turned and smiled and thanked her. Nelly got up and led Ann off to the bedroom, telling her not to try to do too much all in one day, and when they came out a little later everything was all right.

We got to know the Hellenbeks pretty well. They were casual, easygoing, and always good company. In no time Nelly and Ann were doing their marketing together, dropping in on each other during the day, and trading recipes.

At night, out watering our lawns or cutting the grass or something, Ted and I would usually bat the breeze about one thing or another till it got dark. We talked politics, high prices, gardening, stuff like that. He knew plenty about politics and world events, and it was surprising the way his predictions would turn out. At first I offered to bet with him about a few things we disagreed about, but he never would and I’m glad he didn’t; he was seldom wrong when it came to guessing what was going to happen.

Well, that’s the way things were. We’d drop in on each other, take Sunday drives together and go on picnics, play a little bridge at night and on week ends.

Odd little things would still happen occasionally, but less and less often as time went by — and none of them were ever repeated. When Ted bought something now, he never had trouble finding the right change, and he didn’t discover any more rare old new books and Ann stopped walking into doors.

They were always interesting neighbors, though. For one thing, Ted was an inventor. I don’t know why that should have surprised me, but it did. There are such things as inventors; they have to live somewhere, and there’s no good reason why one shouldn’t move in next door to us. But Ted didn’t seem like an inventor; why, the first time he cut their grass, I had to show him how to adjust the set screw that keeps the blades in alignment.

But just the same he was an inventor and a good one. One evening I was picking tomatoes in the little garden we have, and Ted wandered over, tossing something into the air and catching it again. I thought it was a paper clip at first. Ted stood watching me for a minute or so, and then he squatted down beside me and held out this thing in his hand and said, Ever see anything like this before?

I took it and looked at it; it was a piece of thin wire bent at each end to form two egg-shaped loops. Then the wire had been bent again at the middle so that the two loops slid together. I can’t explain it very well, but I could make you one easy in half a minute. What is it? I said, and handed it back to him.

A little invention — the Saf-T-Clip, he said. You use it wherever you’d ordinarily use a safety pin. Here. He unbuttoned one of my shirt buttons and slid the thing onto the two layers of cloth.

Well, do you know that I couldn’t unfasten my shirt where that little thing gripped it? Even when I took hold of both sides of my shirt and pulled, that little piece of twisted wire just dug in and held. Yet when Ted showed me how to undo it — you just pressed the wire at a certain place — it slid right off. It was just the kind of simple thing you wonder, Now, why didn’t somebody ever think of that before?

I told Ted I thought it was a good idea. How’d you happen to think of it? I asked.

He smiled. Oh, it was surprisingly easy. That’s how I’m planning to make a living, Al — inventing little things. First thing I did, the day we arrived in San Rafael, was get a patent application sent off on this thing. Then I mailed a sample to a wire company. He grinned happily and said, I got a reply today; they’ll buy it outright for fifteen hundred dollars.

You going to take it?

Sure. I don’t think it’s the best offer in the world and I might do better if I shopped around. But I’ve been a little worried, frankly, about how we were going to pay for the furniture and stuff we bought, and the house rent. He shrugged. So I’m glad to get this money. We’ll be okay, now, till I finish the next project.

What’s the next one? I said. If you can tell me, that is. I set the tomatoes down and sat down on the grass.

Sure, I can tell you, he said. Picture a flashlight with a little dial set in just above the button. There’s a lens, but it curves inward, and it’s painted black except for a tiny round hole in the center. Press the button and a little beam of light — a special kind of light — no thicker than a pencil lead, shoots out. The beam doesn’t spread, either; it stays the same thickness. You get the idea?

Yeah. What’s it for?

For measuring distances. Turn it on, aim the little dot of light so it hits the end of any distance you want to measure. Then look at the dial, and you can read off the distance from the dot of light to the edge of the lens in feet and fractions of an inch, down to sixteenths. He smiled. Sound good?

Heck, yes, I said. But how will it work?

On flashlight batteries, Ted said, and stood up, as if that were an answer.

Well, I took the hint and didn’t ask any more questions, but if he can make a thing like that — a guy who had to have help adjusting his lawn mower — then I’ll eat it when he’s finished. And yet, darned if I don’t think, sometimes, that he might do it at that.

Oh, Hellenbek’s an interesting guy, all right. Told me once that in fifty years they’d be growing full-grown trees from seeds in ten days’ time. Indoors, too, and with absolutely straight grain and no knots; regular wood factories. I asked him what made him think so and he shrugged and said it was just an idea he had. He said he thought that it would be quite some time in the future, though, and I’m sure he was right about that. But you see what I mean; the Hellenbeks were interesting neighbors.

I guess the most interesting time we ever spent with them, though, was one evening on our front porch. Supper was over, and I was reading a magazine that had come in the mail that morning. Nell was on the porch swing, knitting. The magazine I was reading was all science fiction — trips to Mars in space ships, gun fights with atomic pistols, and so on. I get a kick out of that kind of stuff, though Nell thinks it’s silly.

Pretty soon the Hellenbeks wandered over. Ann sat down with Nelly, and Ted leaned on the porch rail, facing my chair. What’re you reading? he said, nodding at the magazine in my lap.

I handed it to him, a little embarrassed. The cover illustration showed a man from Jupiter with eyes on the ends of long tentacles. Don’t know if you ever read this kind of stuff or not, I said.

Ann said to Nell, I tried that biscuit mix. It’s wonderful.

Oh, did you like it? Nell was pleased, and they started talking food and cooking.

Ted began leafing through my magazine, and I lighted a cigarette and just sat there looking out at the street, feeling lazy and comfortable. It was a nice night, and still pretty light out. Ted got very quiet, slowly turning the pages, studying the illustrations, reading a paragraph or so here and there, and once he said, Well, I’ll be, sort of half under his breath.

He must have looked through that magazine for ten minutes or more, and I could tell he was fascinated. Finally he looked up, handed the magazine back, and said, kind of surprised, That’s very interesting, really very interesting.

Yeah, some of the science-fiction stuff is pretty good, I said. Collier’s magazine had one not long ago, by Ray Bradbury. About a man of the future who escapes back to our times. But then the secret police of the future come for him and take him back.

Really? Ted said. I missed that.

It might still be around the house. If I find it, I’ll give it to you.

I’d like to see it, he said. I had the impression that that sort of thing was brand-new to Ted, but I was wrong because then he said, Now that I know you’re interested — For just a moment he hesitated; then he went on: Well, the fact is I wrote a science-fiction story myself once.

Ann glanced up quickly, the way a woman does when her husband gets off on the wrong subject. Then she turned back to Nell, smiling and nodding, but I could tell she was listening to Ted.

Yeah? I said.

I worked out this story on the world of the future that you —

Ted! said Ann.

But he just grinned at her and went on talking to me. Ann’s always afraid I’ll bore people with some of my ideas.

Well, this one’s silly, Ann said.

Of course it is. Nell said, soothing her down. I can’t understand why Al reads that sort of thing.

Well, you gals just go on with your talk, then, Ted said. You don’t have to listen. Honey, he said to Ann, this is different; this is all right.

Sure, I said, it’s harmless. At least we’re not out drinking or hanging around the pool hall.

Well — He shifted his position and was smiling, very eager, almost excited. I could tell this was something he was itching to talk about. A friend of mine and I used to bat the breeze around about this kind of stuff, and we worked out a story. Matter of fact, we did more than that. He was an amateur printer; had his own printing press in the basement. Did beautiful work. So one time, just for a gag, we printed up an article, a magazine, the way it might look and read sometime in the future. I’ve still got a copy or two around somewhere. Like to see it?

Ted, Ann said pleadingly.

It’s all right, honey, he said.

Well, of course I said sure, I’d like to see his article, and Ted went on over to their house and in a minute or so he came back with a long narrow strip of paper and handed it to me.

It didn’t feel like paper when I took it; it was almost like fine linen to the touch, and it didn’t rattle or crackle, but it was stiff like paper. At the top of the page, there was a title, printed in red — long thin letters, but very easy to read. It said: Time on Our Hands? Underneath was a caption: Should TT be outlawed? A grave new question facing a world already stunned with fear of oxygen-reversion, population-deterrent and “crazy-molecule” weapons.

Ted said, The funny shape of the page is because that’s how it comes out of the teleprint receivers in subscribers’ homes.

Both the girls looked at him contemptuously, and went on with their conversation.

Pretty elaborate gag, I said.

I know. he said, and laughed. We spent a lot of time fooling around with that thing.

I turned back to the article, and a picture in the middle of the page caught my eye. It was a man’s face, smiling, and it seemed to stick right out of the page. It was taken fullface, yet you could see the nose jutting out at you, and the ears and sides of the head seemed farther back in the page. It was beautifully printed and in marvelous color. You could see fine lines around the eyes, the film of moisture on the eyeballs, and every separate strand of hair. I raised the picture closer to my eyes and it went flat, two-dimensional, and I could see it was printed, all right. But when I lowered it to reading distance again, the photograph popped out in three dimensions once more, a perfect miniature human face.

The caption said: Ralph Kent, 32-yearold quantum physicist and world’s first Time-Traveler. His initial words upon his reappearance in the laboratory after testing TT are now world-famous. Nobody in sixteenth-century England, he announced, seems to understand English.

Your friend does some pretty fine printing, I said to Ted.

The photograph? he said. Oh, you can get results like that if you’re willing to take the time. Go ahead; read the article.

I lighted another cigarette and started to read. The article said: The first practical Time-machine reached blueprint stage in the Schenectady laboratories of the DeFarday Electric Company in November of last year, a closely guarded secret among seven top officials of the company. It is said to have been based on an extension of the basic theories of Albert Einstein, famous theoretical physicist of the last century.

A handmade pilot model of DE’s astounding invention was completed on May 18th of this year at a cost, excluding four years’ preliminary research expense, of approximately $190,000. But even before it was completed and successfully tested, it was out of date. A young Australian physicist, Finis Bride, of the University of Melbourne, had published accounts of experiments in which he had successfully substituted a cheaply maintained electric flow-field for the conventional and expensive platinum-alloy heretofore used in gravity-repulsion. The way was cleared, as DE officials were quick to realize, for inexpensive mass production of Time-machines.

It was vitally important, DE’s board decided, to try to keep the young Australian’s invention a secret from competitors. But almost inevitably, while DE was in the process of tooling up, the secret leaked, and soon Asco, BCA and Eastern Electric were in the race to hit the market first. Almost as quickly, British, French, Russian, Italian, and, soon after, televip manufacturers throughout the entire world were in the scramble. By June of this year TT sets were selling at the rate …

Ted’s article went on like that. It was really cleverly done. There were times when you’d almost think you were reading the real McCoy. It told how Time-Travel sets hit the market with a big advertising splash early in the summer. The first day they went on sale the public was apathetic and skeptical. But the following day the press and the televip networks (whatever they were supposed to be) were filled with interviews with people who’d tried Time-Travel, and they were all absolutely bug-eyed with astonishment because the machines actually worked.

You put a little gadget in your pocket called a “tampered relay.” Then you turned on your set, adjusted the dials, stepped into a little beam of invisible light, and you’d appear instantly at just about any time and place you’d set the dials for. You left the set on, or adjusted it to turn on automatically after a certain length of time, and as long as you still had your “tampered relay” all you had to do was stand in the same spot you’d first appeared in and you’d he right back home again standing in the beam of invisible light. Well, the public went nuts for it, and at the time the article was supposedly written, production was going full blast, twenty-four hours a day, and practically every last family in the country was scraping up at least the hundred and fifty dollars which the cheapest model cost.

It was really an imaginative job. One of the neatest touches about it was the note of worry than ran all through the article. It was as though there were some awful problem connected with this rage for Time-Travel that the author didn’t quite want to put into words. He kept hinting about it, wondering if new legislation weren’t needed, and so on, but I couldn’t quite figure out what he was supposed to be bothered about. Time-Travel sounded like a lot of fun to me.

That’s a wonderful job, I told Ted when I finished. But what’s the point? All that trouble — for what?

Ted shrugged. I don’t know, he said. No point, I guess. Did you like it?

I sure did.

You can have that copy if you want. I’ve got another.

Thanks, I said, and laid it in my lap. But what did you plan to have happen next?

Oh, he said, you don’t want to hear any more. He seemed a little embarrassed, as though he wished he hadn’t started this, and he glanced over at his wife, but she wouldn’t look at him. Matter of fact, he went on, the story sort of peters out. I’m really not very good at that kind of thing.

Yes, said Ann, that’s enough.

Come on, I said to Ted. Give.

Ted looked at me for a moment, very serious, then he shook his head again. No, he said, it’s too hard to explain. You’d have to know a good deal about a world of the future, a world in which people are sick with the fear of self-destruction. Unimaginable weapons that could literally tear the entire solar system to pieces. Everyone living in absolute dread of the future.

What’s so hard to imagine about that?

He laughed. These are peaceful times.

They are?

Sure. No weapon worth mentioning except the atom and hydrogen bombs, and those in their earliest, uncomplex stages.

I laughed kind of sourly.

All in all, he said, these are pretty nice times to be alive in.

Well, I’m glad you’re so sure. I said.

I am. Ted answered, and he smiled. Then he stopped smiling. But it’ll be different in another century or so. believe me. At least, he added, that’s how this friend and I figured it out in our story. He shook his head a little and went on, sort of talking to himself.

Life will barely be worth living. Everyone working twelve, fourteen hours a day, with the major part of a man’s income going for taxes, and the rest going for consumers’ goods priced sky-high because of war production. Artificial scarcities, restrictions of all kinds. And hanging over everything, killing what little joy in life is left, is the virtual certainty of death and destruction. Everyone working and sacrificing for his own destruction. Ted looked up at me. A lousy world, the world of the future, and not the way human beings were meant to live.

Go ahead, I said, you’re doing fine.

He grinned, looked at me for a moment, then shrugged. Okay, he said, and settled back on the porch rail. Time-Travel hits the world the way television has hit the country today, only it happens a hundred times faster, because it’s just about the only way to have any real fun. But it’s a wonderful way, all right. Within less than a week after the first sets reach the market, people everywhere are going swimming after work on an untouched beach in California, say in the year 1000. Or fishing or picnicking in the Maine woods before even the Norsemen had arrived. Or standing on a hill overlooking a battlefield, watching the Crusaders have it out with the infidels.

Ted smiled. And sometimes not so safe. In Newton, Kansas, a man arrives home in his living room, bleeding to death from arrow wounds. In Tallahassee a whole family disappears, their TT set turned on and humming, and they are never heard from again, and the same thing happens here and there all over the country and the world. In Chicago a man returns from a day in seventh-century France and dies in two days of the plague; everyone is worried stiff, but the disease doesn’t spread. In Mill Valley, California, a man reappears in his home, his face gashed, his hand mangled, his clothes torn to shreds, and he commits suicide the following day. His wife has been stoned to death as a witch because they were fools enough to appear in a crowded eleventh-century Danish public square in modern dress, talking twenty-first-century English.

Ted grinned and winked at his wife; he was enjoying himself. I was fascinated and I think Nell was, too, whether she’d admit it or not. But then, he went on, warnings are soon published and televipped by all the TT manufacturers and by the government, too, and people quickly learn caution. Brief courses of instruction are published on how to conduct oneself in various times, how to simulate the dress and customs of earlier periods, what dangerous times and places to avoid, and TT really comes into its own. There are still risks, still accidents and tragedies, of course.

Inevitably some people talk too much — the temptation is terribly strong — and they land in insane asylums or jails. Others can’t stay away from the danger times and are lynched by superstitious mobs. A good many people die of the common cold, which science had eradicated and to which the human race had lost its old resistance. But there’s risk in anything. and the important thing is that once again it’s possible to take a vacation. To really get away from it all for a week, a day, or even an hour before dinner. To go back to simpler, more peaceful times, when life is worth living again. And nearly every last soul in the world soon finds a way somehow to own a TT set or get access to one.

Ted looked at me, then at Nell. Naturally, then, the inevitable happened; the only possible ending to my story. Maybe you’ve figured out what had to happen?

I shook my head, and Ted looked at Nell to see if she knew; then he said, It’s easy. People simply stopped coming back. All over the world, within less than a month after TT is introduced, the same almost simultaneous thought seems to strike everyone: Why return? By this time everyone has discovered a favorite time and place in the history and geography of the world. And everybody is enthusiastic for his own particular discovery; some one century or decade, some country, city, town, island, woods or seashore, some one spot on the world’s surface at a certain time that best suits his temperament. And so the same inspiration hits nearly everyone: Why not stay there? Why come back? To what?

Ted slapped at a stray mosquito and said, Within forty days’ time the population of the entire world is down to less than seven million people, and nearly all of them are getting ready to leave. Suddenly the world is left to the tiny fraction of one per cent of human beings who want wars and who cause them. But the people who fight them walk out. Before the governments of the world realize what’s happening — before there’s time to do anything about it — the world’s population is nearly gone.

The last emergency Cabinet meeting of the U.S. government breaks up when the assembled members discover that all but one of them are themselves planning to leave for other times. In six more days the twenty-first century is deserted like a sinking ship, its population scattered thinly back through the preceding twenty-five hundred years. And of the very few who are finally left — the tiny minority who preferred the present — most are soon forced, out of sheer loneliness and the breakdown of a world, to join friends and families in earlier times.

Ted looked at us for a moment, then said, And that, my friends, is how the world ends. On the edge of a precipice, with one foot over the edge, it stops, turns and goes back, leaving an empty earth of birds and insects, wind, rain and rusting weapons.

For maybe half a minute Ted sat staring at nothing, and no one said anything; a cricket began to chirp feebly off in the grass somewhere. Then Ted smiled. Well, he said, how do you like it, Al? Good story?

Yeah, I said slowly, still thinking about it. Yeah, I said, I like it fine. Why don’t you write it; maybe get it published somewhere?

Well, I thought about that, as a matter of fact, but on the whole I prefer inventing. It’s easier.

Well, it’s a good story, I said. though there are some flaws in it, of course.

I’m sure of it, Ted said, but what are they?

Well, for one thing, wouldn’t people in those earlier times notice the sudden increase in population?

I don’t think so. Spread the world’s population through the thousands of preceding years, and at any one time or place it wouldn’t be more than a drop in the bucket.

Okay, I said, but speaking of inventions, wouldn’t everyone traveling back to simpler times start introducing twenty-first-century inventions?

Not to amount to anything. You mean like space ships in 1776?

Something like that.

Ted shook his head. It couldn’t happen. Suppose you went back a hundred years; could you make a television set?

No.

Or even a radio?

I might. A simple one, anyway. Maybe a crystal set.

All right, Ted said. suppose you did. I doubt if you could find all the materials — copper wire, for example — but suppose you managed; what would you listen to? You’d tell people it was a radio and what it was for, and they’d lock you up. You see? And what do most people know anyway about the marvelous things they use every day? Practically nothing. And even the few who do know could never find what they’d need to duplicate them, except in the actual time they belong in. The best you could do would be to introduce one or two of the very simplest things people used in your time, like a modern safety pin in Elizabethan England, if you could find the steel. And a few things like that wouldn’t upset the history of the world.

No, Al, you’d just have to take your place as best you could in the world as you found it, no matter what you knew about the future.

Well, I let it go at that. I didn’t mean to get started knocking holes in Ted’s story, and I went into the house and broke out beer for all hands. I liked Ted’s story, though, and so did Nell, and we both said so, and after a while even Ann broke down and said she liked it, too. Then the conversation got off onto other things.

But there you are. It’s like I said; the Hellenbeks were strange in some ways, but very interesting neighbors, and I was sorry to see them move away. They moved not too long afterward. They liked California fine, they said, and liked the people they’d met. But they were lonesome for old friends, people they’d grown up with, and that’s understandable, of course.

So they moved to Orange, New Jersey. Some old friends were arriving there soon, they said, and the Hellenbeks were anxious to be with them. They expected them, Ted told me, sometime in the spring of 1951, and they wanted to be on hand to meet them.

There’s a new couple next door now — perfectly nice people who play a good game of bridge, and we like them okay. But I don’t know; after the Hellenbeks, they seem kind of dull.

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