Fretfully, Garth answered. "I can't tell you about it. It wouldn't make sense because it doesn't exist now. It exists two million years from now."
Two millions years! What the hell? Garth was cracked, he was bugs, he was off his nut.
Garth punched a button. To that plain secretary he said, "Stella, show Mr. Martin out. And see that no one else without business here gets in. Hire guards."
"Yes, Mr. Garth."
There had been a sleek, prosperous-looking chap waiting in the outer office when Martin went out. He had heard the secretary say, "Mr. Garth will see you now, Mr. Railton."
Two million years. Scoop Martin twisted at his desk, ran another sheet of paper into his typewriter. Two million years. Why, recorded history didn't run back over five thousand years. That guy Garth was nuts. Or was he? Those scientists talked damned funny at times. What would the earth look like in two million years? A baked, waterless plain, broken by jagged mountains? Dead, deserted, lifeless? Man and all of man's achievements gone?
This was 1940. If you added two million to that, what would the number be? It would be darned hard to remember that it was 2,001,940.
Two million years. It was a gag, it had to be a gag. Two million years didn't mean anything, didn't make sense. Yea, it was a gag. Well, he'd just make it a good one. There was his lead. He'd fix Garth for tossing him out on his ear.
His index fingers raced over the keyboard, his thin face writhed into a wolfish grin.