This story is very different from the early novels of McDevitt - and not in a good way. It is also written a lot earlier which may be accounting for the differences but it is not just the craft that is missing - it is the style, the flow - I would not have recognized it as one of his stories if I did not know it is.

Hank works at a post office and one day a package arrives - undeliverable and containing a book that seems to be old and valuable. It turns out to be Emerson's writings - and something pulls Hank to it. And then weird things happen - he wakes up in weird places, he seems to miss minutes and hours. It is an anticlimactic story - you can see the finale coming as soon as weird things start happening. ( )