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"Sean," she said, smiling, "how nice it Is to see you. And to what do we owe this visit, which, I might remind you, is much too few and far between."

"Mary, it's good to see you again, but I must confess that I don't visit my friends as often as I should. Old age creeping up I suspect."

Mary waved a deprecating hand. "Nonsense, you're not getting old. Come in and go through. Patrick's out back."

O'Malley came in, smiling, and stopped to ask, "And where is the august person to be found?"

Mary sighed and nodded her head toward the back. "You'll find the scientist-gone-crazy in the workshop outside." She shook her head. "Ah, I do hope you can make some sense out of his ravings, Sean. Sometimes I think Patrick has plum taken leave of what good sense the Lord gave him. Which won't leave much there a'tall."

O'Malley chuckled. "And what is the 'scientist' doing this time?"

"You'll have to find out for yourself. His explanations leave me confused and I find that I have something else to do right fast and leave him alone to mutter and get mad and bang on something out there and then come storming into the house looking for a beer. But you know him, it always has to do with him making a great deal of money."

"Ah, yes, that again. Well, I'll leave you to find out for myself how much money he's going to make this time."

"Meanwhile, I'll set another plate for lunch for you. Be glad to have you."

"You are a jewel among women, Mary Noonan. I thank you kindly and accept with great anticipation."

"Oh, get along with you, Sean O'Malley, with your blarney." Mary beamed at him as he went along, knowing how he had always praised her cooking.

Long before he had gotten to the Noonan workshed, O'Malley could hear the great man himself and the clatter of whatever it was he was fooling with. Now O'Malley and Patrick Noonan were both machinists with the firm they worked for, but Noonan had about as much scientific training as the average person In the street. However, he was always spouting off as to how much he really did know, to O'Malley's mild annoyance and exasperation as he tried to set things aright. And the eventual argument as to who was right. It usually took on an average about three days before Noonan realized that he was wrong. again, and it was time to move on.

O'Malley approached the workshed in doubtful anticipation that Noonan would be working on anything worth while. He got to the door and stood there for a minute watching.

Inside, Noonan was bending over a form of metal frame sitting on the floor in the middle of the workshop. He was putting a clamp on two pieces of the frame getting ready to weld them together. He turned around to get his welding equipment readied and saw O'Malley. His face lit up with pleasure, and something else.

"O'Malley! Just the man I was hoping would come around. Come in, come in, I want you to see this." Noonan was as excited as a schoolboy rushing out from classes at recess. He waved O'Malley forward impatiently. O'Malley came in, they shook hands and Noonan grinned from ear to ear. O'Malley cocked his head and eyebrows and waited for the project to be explained in a rush. And it was.

"Look here. O'Malley, isn't she a beauty? I've practically finished the machine, except for all the instruments and such that will have to be put into her. You can see that it'll be sturdy as can be and will give me full protection when I go back into time."

O'Malley's mouth dropped open and his eyebrows raised even further. "Back into time?" he asked, incredulous that he was hearing Noonan correctly.

"Of course, O'Malley. It'll take me to anyplace in the past that I'll want to visit..." He broke off at the expression on O'Malley's face. "Where have you been, O'Malley? Haven't you been reading about the contest?"

"I don't think I want to know, Noonan. but what contest is it this time?"

"The time machine contest that this millionaire in Atlanta is putting on. He wants to see if anyone can come up with a real, bonafide time machine. And, O'Malley -- he will pay two million dollars for the person that comes up with a machine like that.  Two million, O'Malley! How's that for an incentive?"

O'Malley looked at the machine, then back at Noonan. He shook his head slowly. "Noonan, do you actually believe that you can make a machine that will do that? Do you actually believe that anybody anywhere can make a machine that will take you back into time?"

Noonan drew himself up, an aggrieved look on his face. "And just why do you think I'm going to all this trouble. O'Malley? I've practically got the machine; now all I've got to do is to do a lot of studying to find out how to send it back In time."

"I can't believe that you actually are going to try to study to find out ... Study what, Noonan? You know some math, but good heavens, man, don't you realize what It would take to find out what sort of..." O'Malley stopped for a moment, the enormity of the task causing him to just stand in awe of the whole business.

"But H. G. Wells did It, O'Malley. And if he could show how..."

"H.G. Wells!" O'Malley broke in loudly. He stared at Noonan. "You can't be serious! That was just a fictional story!"

"You didn't pay attention, O'Malley. He showed that if you got a machine whirling fast enough it would disappear then reappear in a time period of one's own choosing."

O'Malley closed his mouth with a snap and went over to sit down in a chair. After a moment or two he looked up at Noonan. "You're basing all this on a fictional story that has no basis in fact and you think that if you get this contraption whirling fast enough you'll suddenly find yourself in some other time period."

"It's the theory that I think will work, O'Malley. It stands to reason that if one whirls around fast enough, something's bound to change."

O'Malley leaned forward to put his head in his hands. He sat there for a few moments shaking it back and forth. Finally he looked up again. "Noonan, don't you realize that if you get that thing whirling fast enough you're going to get so dizzy you'll throw up all over the insides of the machine and God only knows what would happen if you couldn't stop it."

"O'Malley, you're always so terribly suspicious of anything I try to do! I am going to find out from the science books just what sort of devices and instruments I will need in order to make this thing work."

O'Malley stared at his friend and after a moment he started chuckling, the chuckling developing into chortles, the chortles developing into laughter. He sat there rocking back and forth and laughing fit to kill. while Noonan got madder and wished for a moment that he could do just that.

" The hell with ye, O'Malley! I'm going to go ahead and make a time machine that will work and I'll collect that two million dollars and when I do, I'll tell ye that I'll just ride past ye with me wife at me side and I'll throw one of my chewed-on cigars out at ye."

Sometime later O'Malley came out of the workshed and approached the house. He stood in the doorway, looking uncertainly inside when Mary passed by. She immediately came to the door, her face full of question, and let him in. O'Malley looked at her contritely.

"I'm afraid I've insulted your husband again, Mary. I just wanted to see if he would even talk to me now."

"Well. Sean, I don't know what went on out there, but with the way you were laughing and with him coming storming into the house with fire in his eyes, I can imagine that you are not too very welcome at the moment."

"And that he isn't," Noonan's voice came from the' next room and he came through the door. He looked at his wife. "Mary, will you please inform this man that I am not in the mood for any more of his insulting ways?"

Mary looked around at O'Malley and rolled her eyes. "Er, Sean, you're still welcome to have lunch with us."

Sean shrugged. "Maybe I'd better take a rain check, Mary."

Mary made an exasperated sound in her throat. "Patrick," she said, turning to him, "we are not going to send Sean away from our home, not when we can resolve this silly argument right now. Do you hear me?"

"But, Mary," Noonan blustered, "he laughed at my project!"

"Nobody ... Nobody, Patrick, will win such a prize because the millionaire set an impossible goal for the science of today. And for an individual ... Whoosh! ... It's as though he were asking for the old-time scheme of turning lead into gold. I think he just wants to have fun looking at all the failures." O'Malley grinned at Noonan and chuckled. "You want to make the millionaire sit up and take notice? Tell him you already know of a time machine in existence this very moment and-tell him for a goodly sum you'll let him in on the secret."

They both looked at him with mouths suddenly agape and eyebrows raised. Mary asked first. "A time machine already in existence? And working?"

"Aye, and been here quite a while, too."

"All right, O'Malley, enough of the riddle," Noonan said testily. "Who made one that's been here like you say?"

O'Malley smiled. "Why, the Lord Himself, Noonan. All of the people of the world have been traveling around in the most beautiful time machine that ever was created. Going round and round the sun day and night for how many billions of years now?"

Mary put her hand up to her chest, her face alight with delight. "Of course, the earth itself!"

Noonan made several false starts, then managed to bluster, "But that's not the kind of machine the millionaire wants, O'Malley. He wants a man-made one, like the one I'm working on."

"And will never get off the ground," O'Malley said, drily.

"You don't know that!"

"Yes, he does, Patrick, my love," Mary said. She held up her hand to forestall his objection. "You can still tinker with your plaything and have fun with it. but I much prefer to travel on the one I'm already on." She beamed at O'Malley. "Thank you. Sean, I'll remember to thank the Lord in church Sunday for the wonderful trip."