"Huh?" said Sam. "What's that?"

"This is you," the voice on the wire repeated. "You, Sam Yoder. Don't
you recognize your own voice? This is you, Sam Yoder, calling from the
twelfth of July. Don't hang up!"

* * * * *

Sam hadn't even thought of hanging up. He was annoyed. He was up a
telephone pole, trying to do some work, resting in his safety belt and
with his climbing irons safely fixed in the wood. Naturally, he thought
somebody was trying to joke with him, and when a man is working is no
time for jokes.

"I'm not hanging up," said Sam dourly, "but you'd better!"

The voice was familiar, though he couldn't quite place it. If it talked
a little more, he undoubtedly would. He knew it just about as well as he
knew his own, and it was irritating not to be able to call this joker by
name.

The voice said, "Sam, it's the second of July where you are, and you're
up a pole by Bridge's Run. The line's dead in two places, else I
couldn't talk to you. Lucky, ain't it?"

[Illustration]

"Whoever you are," Sam said formidably, "it ain't going to be lucky for
you if you ever need telephone service and you've kept wasting my time.
I'm busy!"

"But I'm you!" insisted the voice persuasively. "And you're me! We're
both the same Sam Yoder, only where I am, it's July twelfth. Where you
are, it's July second. You've heard of time-traveling. Well, this is
time-talking. You're talking to yourself--that's me--and I'm talking to
myself--that's you--and it looks like we've got a mighty good chance to
get rich."

Then something came into Sam's memory and every muscle in his body went
taut and tight, even as he was saying to himself, "It can't be!"

But he'd remembered that if a man stands in a corner and talks to the
wall, his voice will sound to him just the way it sounds to somebody
else. Being in the telephone business, he'd tried it and now he did
recognize the voice. It was his. His own. Talking to him. Which, of
course, was impossible.

"Look," said hoarsely, "I don't believe this!"

"Then listen," the voice said briskly. And Sam's face grew red. It
burned. His ears began to feel scorched. Because the voice--_his_
voice--was telling him strictly private matters that nobody else in the
world knew. Nobody but himself and Rosie.

"Quit it!" groaned Sam. "Somebody might be listening! Tell me what you
want and ring off!"

The voice told him what it wanted. His own voice. It sounded pleased