Professor Peter Maxwell sets out for one of the Coonskin planets, but his beam is intercepted
and later returned to Earth only to find that his beam was actually duplicated, his duplicate
has been killed, and his friends (some goblins, a ghost, and a time-traveling Neanderthal
among others) have already buried him.
I wonder whether this was the first transporter
accident story (which, as we all know, eventually leads to two Will Rikers).