Once again, I travel to an alien planet.  While I travel, I study the location of the author's house, the supposed layout of the inside of the house and the customs of the time to which I'm traveling.  I arrive at the alien destination and I'm outfitted for a time travel job.  Once again, I enter the time travel machine and my work starts.

I arrive in a sort of alleyway, alongside the famous author's house.  As far as I can tell, I'm unobserved and I see no one about.  I move out of the alleyway and over to the front door of the house.  I use the advanced key and thus I'm able to open the front door.  I go inside and then wait for a bit, to see if anyone follows me to the front door.  I detect no one and I lock the door.  What I do detect is the smell of unwashed alien.  (Then, as in our own past, people of way back when took few baths, maybe just one a year.)

I switch on the light that the aliens provided me.  The light is invisible to the unaided eye and I can only see because of the alien face shield that moves the wavelength of the light into my visible spectrum.  I move through the house, finding that the layout of the inside of the house is not quite as advertised.  However, I do find the room where the author writes and the desk that he uses for his writing.  The desk is locked, which seems a bit strange, since the writer is the only one who lives in the house.

However, my advanced key opens the desk and I find pages of what must be the manuscript that I was sent to copy.  The manuscript is neatly stacked at the left side of the desk and I suspect that the famous author was left handed.  I also find another stack of paper off to the right.   I get my handy dandy copy device going and stack the manuscript in the sort of skeleton paper input tray of the copy device and watch the device begin to feed in the manuscript pages and move them to the output tray.

While I wait for the copy device to do its thing, I examine the stack of papers off to the right.  I can't read the alien cursive, but the handwriting is different from what I saw on the manuscript pages.  (I begin to wonder.  If the writer lived alone and apparently worked in secret, what are the other papers?  The manuscript pages are in much nicer paper stock than the other pages.  I get an idea, that will have to wait until the copier machine finishes.)

I prowl the house as I wait for the copier to finish.  I stay well back from the windows and I see no one, except a man with a lantern, almost certainly a night watchman type,  checking for things out of place.  The night watchman walks past, with no indication that he saw anything of interest. I then realize that I have been holding my breath and I again begin to breathe normally.  (It would appear that I'm not really cut out to be a sneak thief.)

I then return to the copier device.  The device is chuckling away, as it moves the manuscript pages from the input tray to the output tray.  I remove the pages from the output tray and stack them, face down on the desk.  The sound made by the copier device is minimal and shouldn't be audible in the next room, much less outside the house.  The copier device works it's way through the manuscript pages.  I then try to match the other pages, the ones from the right side of the desk to the last pages of the manuscript.

There are many more manuscript pages than there are other pages.  However, it still takes me a while to match the other pages to the manuscript pages, a task made more difficult by the fact that I can't read the alien writing.  However, I do find a match, at a chapter break.  The pages on the right side of the desk are identical to some of the pages of the manuscript.  I say identical, the words are the same, but the handwriting is very different.

I then decide to copy the right hand pages as well.

I then have to wait for the copier to work its way through the right hand pages as well.  While I wait, I turn the stack of the manuscript pages over, so that they're in the same order that I found them.

By the end of the second copy cycle, every sound in the house is someone creeping up on me, in my imagination.  I do manage to wait until I have copied all of the right hand stack of pages.

A quick check of the copy machine reveals images of the manuscript pages and the other document pages, in the memory of the machine.

I then neatly rearrange everything, so that it's not obvious that someone has been at the manuscript.  As I check the desk, before leaving, I notice that there's a stack of silver appearing coins in a little cubbyhole in the desk.  I get a photo of the desk, the cubbyholes, the coins, the papers, everything.  I then take one of the last manuscript pages, which shouldn't have any impact, since the information is also written in the other papers.  I then close and re-lock the desk.  I fold up and stow the copy device.

I then move back to the front door.  A quick peek through the front windows reveals someone, probably a drunk, sitting on the front porch stairs.  I decide to wait for a bit, hoping that the drunk will move on.

The drunk doesn't move on.  He also produces a bottle and begins to swig out of it.  He then begins to maybe sing, in a low voice.

I can't wait until the drunk's singing attracts someone else, so I open the front door and use the alien supplied non-lethal device to render the drunk unconscious.  I re-lock the front door and step over the drunk.  I'm then confronted by a man, from out of the shadows.

The man says something in alien, probably, "What have we here?"

I again use the alien supplied non-lethal device to render the man unconscious.  I then pick up the drunk's bottle and splash and smear a bit of alien booze on the man.

I can then see the shadows of a lantern, down the street and around the corner.  I duck back into the alleyway, where I arrived and activate the time machine return signal as I hear the night watchman apparently challenging the two men sleeping in the street.

I find myself back at the time machine.

The technicians are dressed in the same kind of protective suits that I wear and they take my copier, my advanced key and my weapon.  I then am put through some kind of decontamination process.  Once I have been decontaminated, I'm then run through a bunch of medical tests.  Apparently I pass all of the tests.