One morning in early summer his own mailbox in the downstairs hallway disgorged a long envelope, addressed to Mr. Samuel Wilson. The upper left-hand corner bore a printed return address: Time-Between-Time, 746 Ochterlonie Building, New York 3, N. Y. He raced upstairs, locked himself in the bathroom, the one place Mollie couldn't interrupt him, and tore the envelope open with trembling fingers.
It was a form letter, with the "Dear Mr. Wilson" not too accurately typed in. It enclosed one of those blue-printed envelopes in simulated handwriting. The letterhead carried the familiar impossible address, but no phone number.
Maybe it was chance, maybe it was ESP, but he himself had got onto Time-Between-Time's mailing list!
He had trouble focusing his eyes to read the letter.
Dear Mr. Wilson:
Would you invest $1 to get a chance at $1,000?
Of course you would, especially if, win or lose, you got your dollar back.
In this atomic age, yesterday's science fiction has become today's and tomorrow's science fact. Time-Between-Time, a new organization, is planning establishment of a publishing company to bring out the best in new books, both fact and fiction, in the field of science, appealing to people who have never been interested until now.
Before we start, we are conducting a poll to find out what the general public thinks and feels about our probabilities of success. We're asking for your co-operation.