Arthur Leacock has his eye on his boss, young Robert Ernsohn, who has invented a time machine and is about to try it out on himself. Young professors, such as Robert, are not to be trusted with the young girls on campus.

I found the story to be quite a scary character sketch of Arthur, but was disapponted that the time travel aspect dealt with that worn-out aspect of the Earth moving away from the time traveler.
The machine, the time machine, was ready for operation. It was clean and had been checked over for a week; all the parts which were doubtful had been replaced, and on a trial run yesterday it had performed perfectly. Robert’s sweater—obert’s, of course, not Arthur’s—had been sent two days into the future and had come back. It had been sent six months and then five years into the future, and it had still come back. But of course Arthur had never doubted that it would.

Variants

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  1. “Brown Robert” by Terry Carr, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1962.
    2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . written by Terry Carr