
Galahad “Gooseneck” McCarthy is a hard‑bitten wanderer who stumbles into the cluttered shack of an obsessive physicist, Professor Ruddle. The professor has finally cobbled together a humming coil of wires and glass that he swears can hurl a human back 110 million years. In exchange for a hot meal and a promise of cash, McCarthy is pressed into service as the first test subject, despite his obvious mistrust of the eccentric’s jittery explanations.
As the two clash over money, credibility, and the very fabric of time, the story spirals into a witty, high‑octane scramble. The makeshift laboratory teeters between brilliant invention and chaotic mishap, and every clank of the machine threatens to rewrite humanity’s future. Listeners are drawn into the electric banter and the uneasy partnership, wondering whether a drifter with a sharp tongue can survive a journey that could reshape the whole of history.
Language
en
Duration
~29 minutes (28K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
2021-01-21
Rights
Public domain in the USA.

1920–2010
Best known for sharp, funny science fiction that poked at politics, technology, and human behavior, this classic satirist turned big ideas into stories that still feel lively and sly. He wrote relatively little compared with some of his peers, but his short fiction left a lasting mark on the genre.
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