Here is a brace of vignettes by the Old Vignette Master ... short and sharp ... like a hypodermic! Illustrated by STONE...

"The first time machine, gentlemen," Professor Johnson proudly informed his two colleagues. "True, it is a small-scale experimental model. It will operate only on objects weighing less than three pounds, five ounces and for distances into the past and future of twelve minutes or less. But it works." The small-scale model looked like a small scale—a postage scale—except for two dials in the part under the platform. Professor Johnson held up a small metal cube. "Our experimental object," he said,

He was wet and muddy and hungry and cold, and he was fifty thousand light-years from home. A strange blue sun gave light and the gravity, twice what he was used to, made every movement difficult. But in tens of thousands of years this part of war hadn't changed. The flyboys were fine with their sleek spaceships and their fancy weapons. When the chips are down, though, it was still the foot soldier, the infantry, that had to take the ground and hold it, foot by bloody foot. Like this damned plane