So I began explaining. I told him where I was born, and where I went to school, and where I had taken my sabbaticals--including this other dimension. And Krasnow believed me. I can't account for it, except possibly because he knew he was a crook and knew I wasn't one--exactly. Anyway, he believed me, and we made the deal and I did the side-shuffle, as agreed. The journey to that other dimension is not a pleasant one. It does disturbing things to the stomach, and you see everything thin and elongated, as if you're sitting too far to the side in a movie theater. I got there, however, and waited for the hiccups to subside. _Hiccupi laterali_, I had called them when I considered writing an article for the _Medical Journal_ after my first trip. With the hiccupi gone, I stole some clothing--which was one of the riskiest parts of the program--and waited for morning. I didn't have any money, of course, so I had to hitchhike into town. I could have stolen myself a better fit, but people aren't clothes-conscious in that dimension. They're more interested in what you are and what you can do. The driver of the car that gave me a lift asked, "And what is your field of endeavor?" I told him, "I am able to eliminate the long wait in ivory production by accelerating the growth cycle of elephants." He was deeply impressed and tipped me handsomely. I was less impressed with his talent for growing cobless corn, and therefore had to return only a small part of the sum he gave me. The world of this dimension had developed some remarkable parallels to Earth. I mean our Earth, which falls into what I have designated Timeline One Point One, since it's the Earth with which I am most familiar. Every other world that has a language calls itself Earth, too. I had to visit briefly hundreds of the lateral worlds, hovering over primordial swamps, limitless oceans, insect kingdoms and radioactive planetoids, before I found the one that was truly parallel. It existed in Timeline Seventeen Point Zero Eight, and it had refrigerators, platinum blondes, automobiles, airplanes, apple pie, tabloids, television, scotch and soda--just about everything we think makes life worthwhile. But it had its little differences, which was only to be expected in a timeline where the bionomics could create a new world each time someone changed his mind. Thus, the cobless-corn man was driving what looked to me like a Chevrolet, but which was a Morton in his world. He let me off near a downtown restaurant where, thanks to our little exchange of talent talk, I had enough money for breakfast. It was considered unethical to swap talent talk outside the limits of certain rigidly defined groups, so I didn't try to out-impress the waitress. * * * * *