Fred McCann

Origin
One the lame from the man, prison-escapee Fred McCann accidentally hit a man with his green sedan. Fred sees the man he struck is the spitting image of him, and thinks it a stroke of luck if he can convince the police it is him while he gets away.

Fred hears a strange noise in the woods and goes to investigate, finding a strange, spherical machine and two equally-bizarre figure next to it. The figures explain to him they are alien scientists from Alpha Centauri. They are testing their newly-designed Time-Space Machine, which permits them to travel through space and time.

To illustrate, they invite Fred on a trip to Earth's past of one-million years prior. They arrive in the age of the dinosaurs. Fred finds a great deal of gold on the ground, but the Centaurians refuse to permit anyone to take anything from a different timeline. Fred threatens to take it anyway, but the aliens persist. They are attacked by a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and barely escape in the time machine.

Returning Fred to same spot 10 minutes before they left, the aliens tell him they plan to share their machine with the people of Earth. Fred McCann decides he wants to be the only people of Earth to receive the benefits of the machine and shoots the visitors from another star dead. He goes back to the road to discover his car is gone. While he's thinking about it, a green sedan runs him down. He recognizes the driver as himself, realizing the fact he'd come back 10 minutes before he left.

Public Domain Appearances

 * Weird Thrillers #2