"You talk as if you had been drinking already, man. Snap out of it. I like men with clear heads." It was not only a delaying tactic, Ernie thought; it was plainly a case of nerve-busting. They were going to force it out of him. He had already conceded they were not a gang of thieves using his basement for a hideaway; they were not digging a secret tunnel for the Defense Department. "You like men with clear heads? What am I, some sort of recruit?" "Now!" the man exclaimed, suddenly thrust into a new frame of mind. "We are now on the same plane. You _are_ a recruit and we can understand each other now." "So where is this?" "This is your house, of course, but we're not quite there yet. We're in what you would call--oh, another dimension." Ernie reached for the drink and sniffed it. Its smell fitted the situation. "And what does that mean?" "Oh, you and I have lived in the same vicinity all our lives, even crossed each other's paths, but we are in different dimensions--different worlds in the same place." "You mean like Mars and Earth?" "I mean like Mars _in_ Earth, or vice versa," the man answered. Ernie jumped up and started for the ladder. "I'm getting out of here--" "Don't be a fool! Climb that ladder and you'll butt your skull in!" "I came through the hatch. I'll leave through the hatch." "But we've shifted thirty degrees. You told us to. Now the top of the ladder is thirty degrees away from the door of the laundry chute, which is quite impossible to reach, my friend, because there is perhaps dirt and a foundation and everything else in the way. We'd have to tear out our own structure and gouge into yours. This we cannot do. Too expensive." * * * * * Ernie had heard enough. He climbed the ladder to the top, butted his head and climbed down. "Okay. You win. What's the score?" "You and Marsha," the man said. "Melinee," Ernie corrected. "Melinee in your dimension, Marsha in ours. You and she exist in our dimension as well. Same types, same characteristics inwardly. But not the same outwardly. Different hair, different name--your own features were to be slightly different here." Ernie sat down on the sofa beside the two old men. He buried his head. "This is the other dimension? Then where is the other me?" "Oh, no," his host said. "This is not 'the other' dimension. This is the _experimental_ dimension. _You_ are from the second. What we are both in is a third realm sponsored by the government--the federal government of The Unison States. Congrice sponsored this scientific investigation, provided we could accomplish it before the session ends." The first desire to laugh at the stupidity of the nightmare grappled with Ernie. But when he looked at that ladder and remembered the bump on his head, he knew this was not the time or place for a nightmare.