Dugan actually looked startled.
"What's the matter?" Belcher asked, showing off his erudition. "You got a manuscript with Shakespeare's name on it? Discover a Shakespeare autograph on a pulp story?" He laughed uproariously as though he'd cracked a joke at my expense.
Dugan said, "N-no—only that's the story. I mean—" He faltered and then said, "I wish you'd let me just tell you this story."
We said, "Sure, go ahead."
"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."