He made for the sleigh as if all the imps of Hades were after him. The imps weren’t, but Commander Scott Pelham was.

 In January of 1941 (the month in which I attained my majority), I undertook something new-a collaboration.

 Fred Pohl, after all, was not merely an editor. He was also a budding writer. He has since come to be a giant in the field, but in those early days he was struggling along with only the sort of meager success I was having. Alone, and in collaboration with other Futurians, he turned out stories under a variety of pseudonyms. The one he used most frequently was “James MacCreigh.”

 As it happened, he had written, under that pseudonym, a small fantasy called “The Little Man on the Subway,” which he apparently had hopes for but couldn’t get right. He asked me if I would rewrite it, and the request flattered me. Besides, I was still trying to get into Unknown, and if I couldn’t do it on my own, maybe I could do it by way of a collaboration. I wasn’t proud-at least as far as fantasy was concerned.

 I took on the task and did it virtually at a sitting. Doing it easily didn’t help, however. I submitted it to Campbell for Unknown on January 27, 1941, and he rejected it. I had to hand it back to Pohl.

 Pohl, however, with the true agent’s soul, never gave up, and in 1950, long after I had utterly forgotten it, he managed to place it with a small magazine called Fantasy Book.