Tube to nowhere

Tube to nowhere, by Henry Kuttner

Tube to Nowhere, “Thrilling Wonder Stories”, June 1941.

JOE BINNEY wriggled uncomfortably in his seat on the Jersey bus. His thin face, topped by mouse-colored hair, flushed with annoyance as he squirmed. The dignified, white-headed oldster sitting next to him gave Joe a fishy stare.

“Sorry, Mr. Dennler,” Binney muttered. “That da— that bottle keeps digging into me.”

“Bottle?” Dennler’s tufted eyebrows rose. “Do you drink?”

Binney hastily disclaimed the idea. He had to disclaim many ideas in Dennler’s sanctified company. Dennler, it seemed, demanded certain definite qualifications in the salesmen from whom he purchased goods.

Oh, well—Dennler was already sold on a big order from Pinnacle Novelty Company, the firm for which Binney worked. That meant a fat commission, and a chance to take Susan Blythe to dinner and the theater. Binney’s thin face wrinkled into a wistful smile. Maybe, some day, Susan would marry him....

“Oh, the bottle,” Binney said, returning to the present. “Some chap I know gave it to me. Wanted to have it tested in our labs. He didn’t know what it was—combined some chemicals and got a fluid that wouldn’t react to anything, he says. Doesn’t matter. Here’s the Tunnel. We’ll get a taxi on the other side and I’ll take you up to the office. Mr. Horton will be glad to see you.”

“Ah,” said Dennler. “Always like to settle matters in person. I shall put in a good word for you, Binney. You’re an excellent salesman.”

“Thank you,” said Binney. “Hope we can find a taxi in a hurry. It’s raining cats and dogs.”

It was, indeed, pouring. As the bus circled down the ramp into the Holland Tunnel, water was cascading along the gutters. A low, gray sky was sullen overhead. In the distance thunder growled ominously. Lightning forked.

THE bus halted as the driver checked the toll. Then it rolled on into the brightly lit depths of the tube. The roar of the storm faded to a faint humming. Binney automatically began to count the metal doors that broke the smooth walls at regular intervals.

One ... two ... three ... He was thinking of the glamorous face of Susan Blythe ... four ... five ... He was due for a promotion—this sale would clinch it. And then ... six ... seven ... And then Tim Blake, Binney’s rival in business and love, could go hang, for all his Greek god profile and Atlas physique.

Eight ... nine ... The bus sped faster. Idly Binney wondered how long the tunnel was. The doors were about forty feet apart. With the concentration that such trivial things evoke, it abruptly seemed most important to Binney not to lose count.

Ten ... eleven ...

“—especially on Tuesdays,” said Mr. Dennler. Binney caught only the tail end of the sentence and grunted.

Fifteen ... twenty ... thirty ... forty doors.

Dennler was slightly irritated. He liked an audience. And obviously Binney wasn’t listening. He was staring out the window rather fishily.

Fifty ... sixty ...

“Don’t you think so?” Dennler repeated.

“Uh—yes. Just a moment.”

But the other kept on talking. Binney was conscious of a slow surge of annoyance. He had reached the one hundred and ninety-fifth door when Dennler leaned forward, and the bottle in Binney’s pocket dug agonizingly into his ribs.

The salesman cursed luridly.

And that started the whole fantastic affair. Because when Binney suddenly got mad, his suprarenal glands naturally became active and poured adrenalin into his blood-stream. And just at that moment a bolt of lightning hit near the bus. The two incidents were connected.

The bus was rolling up the ramp toward the New York exit. Thunder was bellowing. And out of the cloudy skies a crackling streak of blazing light flashed....

Lightning plays strange tricks sometimes. No one in the bus was injured. Nothing happened to anybody—except Binney. He vanished.

Dennler yelped and collapsed, moaning in a low, hopeless voice. When your companion in a bus seat abruptly disappears, it is difficult to cling to sanity. Mr. Dennler undoubtedly felt that he had not deserved such treatment.

Binney, himself, was past thinking. As the lightning struck, he was momentarily conscious of a wave of uncomfortable warmth. He heard glass tinkle, and felt the bottle in his pocket break. The fluid gushed out, seeming to sink right into Binney’s skin—he could feel it, like liniment, penetrating through his flesh with a queer, hot tingling. There was a grinding shock....

“That was a close one,” said Binney, turning to grin at Dennler.

Only Dennler wasn’t there any more. The bus wasn’t there.

New York wasn’t there!

“Oh, my God,” Binney said quietly, appalled. “Wha—wha—wha—” He fell silent, considering.

HE was sitting on hard stone, translucent green glass that looked like emerald, but which obviously wasn’t. Above him the sky had turned crimson, and bloodshot clouds drifted across it. The sun was excessively large, and red. All around Binney were red walls, rising to a height of several hundred feet.

He sat approximately in the center of a crescent-shaped plaza, paved with green stones. Nearby, in the middle of the half-moon, was a sunken depression in the pavement filled with water. A hundred feet away the wall of a building loomed, white, Binney now realized, but painted red by the queer sunlight.

It was like being at the bottom of a crescent-shaped well, surrounded by the walls of the towering structures, windowless and enigmatic.

“Urdle ah nyasta dree?” asked an inquiring voice behind Binney.

Naturally puzzled, the unfortunate salesman turned his head. What he saw made him rise and retreat rapidly back until his foot slipped on curving stones.

With a sharp, shrill cry, Binney fell into the pool.

“Ah nyasta wurn!” said the strange voice, more decisively.

Binney scarcely heard it. He was quite certain now that he had gone mad. Certainly when one falls into a pool, a normal amount of dampening is expected. But Binney’s body was reclining at full length on an elastic, watery surface which gave only slightly under his weight. It wasn’t H2O, that was plain. Some vague recollection of deuterium — heavy water—stabilized Binney’s wavering sanity as he scrambled back on the stones.

“Urdle wurn,” the voice said, tinged now with impatience.

Binney, on his hands and knees, stared at the creature confronting him. Or, rather, the creatures. Binney couldn’t be sure. The thing had two heads, both of them extraordinary. The body was lean, long, and covered with reddish fur. The legs—two of them— were short and stumpy, like an elephant’s. From the shoulders grew a folded, grayish membrane that completely hid the arms, leaving only two claw-like hands visible.

There were two heads sprouting from the skinny shoulders. Each had two bulging, large-pupiled eyes, no nose, and a tiny button of a mouth. The ears were large and bat-like. The face on the left had reddish whiskers on its darkish skin, and a short crop of crimson hair. The head on the right was more delicately featured, without a beard, and had long, burnished curls. It seemed oddly feminine.

“Oh, my God,” Binney moaned, not daring to rise. “I’ll wake up in a minute. I know I will.”

“Nyasta!” said the bearded head. But the other one shook itself angrily.

“Dree!” it snapped shrilly. “Urdle dree!”

“Dree,” conceded the other in a sulky voice. “Urdle dree”

This seemed to settle it, but threw little light on the problem for Binney. He rubbed his aching eyes and tried to think. A hallucination? Maybe. On an impulse, he gingerly reached out and touched a furry, lean claw. The claw gripped his hand and cordially shook it. This nearly finished poor Binney, who shuddered and gave himself up for lost.

“Ah nyasta,” said the deeper voice.

Binney felt himself being fingered. It was not a pleasant sensation. He opened his eyes again and found himself staring into the inquisitive pupils of Red-whiskers.

The creature, or creatures, pointed up, and made an inquiring sound. For some reason this heartened Binney. He stood up, staring around. Then he screamed.

STRONG talons were gripping him.

The gray, folded membrane about the thing’s arms unfolded and took the shape of strong, bat-like wings. Binney felt himself being carried up into the air. His stomach turned over. By some quirk of mind, he became violently enraged at the indignity. Carried off by the seat of his pants... red fury surged through Binney.

Simultaneously he felt a grinding shock, a wave of sickness and disorientation. He fell heavily, landing on his hands and knees on a metal surface that sent out angry echoes. A hoarse voice bellowed curses. But, Binney realized with heartfelt relief, these were good, Brooklyn oaths. Nothing about nyasta or urdle dree.

Brakes screamed. A policeman appeared and plucked Binney from his position, spread-eagled across the hood of a truck.

“Hah!” said the cop. “I know your kind. Trying to bump yourself off, eh?”

Binney stared around. He was at the New York side of the Holland Tunnel. Familiar skyscrapers rose all around him. Taxis honked and a streetcar rumbled by in the distance. The Empire State loomed against the gray, stormy sky.

“No,” said Binney, gulping. “I—I fell off. Off the ramp up there.” He pointed wildly.

It took much argument, but at last the salesman got free. He staggered to a subway....

There was a slight disturbance there. Binney, getting an umbrella in the ribs, and finding himself sandwiched in between two plump and odorous gentlemen, cried, “Out please,” at his station, with no perceptible result. Valiantly he fought his way through the mob. Anger began to rise in him.

A woman screamed. She chattered incoherent sounds and pointed at Binney. He did not, for the moment, realize that he had briefly vanished into thin air and as suddenly returned. There had been only a momentary feeling that he stood amid a pallid scarlet glow, untenanted save for a man who had been jammed against him in the crush.

Climbing out of the subway, Binney abruptly gasped as his chaotic thoughts focused upon the matter. He fled to a drugstore and made a hasty telephone call to Jersey. Presently an answer came.

“For heaven’s sake,” Binney cried, “what was in that bottle you gave me. Professor? Opium?”

Muffled grunts told of distant merriment.

“Opium? I told you I did not know what it was. It would not react to litmus or anything. Why?”

BINNEY, in great detail, told why.

There was a pause on the other end of the wire. Then the Professor said jubilantly:

“This is wonderful! My boy, you have been transported to another universe! Another dimension, existing coincidentally with ours, on another plane of vibration. The combination of the lightning shock—the electric energy— and my elixir sent you into another world. How I wish I could make more of the stuff! But the secret is lost, I fear.”

“Then it was real? I wasn’t dreaming?”

“It was real enough. I’m only theorizing, of course, from what you tell me, but it fits in with all our knowledge of non-Euclidean physics. As Planck puts it—” The Professor’s words became somewhat puzzling to Binney, who inquired:

“Huh? How does lamb-pie come into it?”

“Lambda. And pi. Part of a formula—an equation. It doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t understand, anyway. Try to imagine, Binney, two worlds, interlocking, existing in the same space but at a different rate of vibration. You were very lucky, you know. The ground level in the other world might not have been the same as ours, and you might have materialized there under the surface, or miles above it. As it was, where did you say you landed?”

Binney explained again about the crescent-shaped plaza. The Professor laughed.

“You were doubly lucky. The end of the Holland Tunnel in New York just happens to coincide with that crescent-shaped plaza in the red world. Suppose the accident had happened while you were up, say, in the Empire State? You’d have found yourself in the other world, in empty air over a thousand feet above the ground. What’s the matter? Are you there?”

“Uh, yes,” said Binney, picking up the telephone receiver, which he had dropped in a momentary fit of stark horror.

“So. Another thing—you say you returned to New York through the dimensions when you became angry? When that creature started to fly away with you? That is significant. Let me see....” The Professor grumbled and muttered, and at length became coherent again.

“I have it, perhaps. Adrenalin. The ductless glands. We know little about them, but when lightning struck you in the Holland Tunnel, we had three factors. The electric energy, my elixir, and the adrenalin in your blood-stream—for you say you were angry at the time. One of them may have been the catalyst. The resultant chemical reaction altered your physical pattern so you were moved from one dimension to another.”

“But I came back again—”

“When you got angry. When the adrenalin flooded your body again. The elixir is probably in a state of suspension within your tissues. The lightning may have been the initial catalyst, and it isn’t necessary any more. Every time you get mad, you go into the other world. Get mad again, and you come back. I’m just theorizing, of course,” the Professor said chattily, “but you did say something happened just now in the subway. Repeat the incident, please.”

Binney inserted a nickel in the slot at the operator’s request and continued his story.

“Ah,” the Professor chuckled. “So human bodies conduct the power, too. Like electricity. You can take people with you into the other dimension—as you did with that man in the subway. Luckily, it was only momentary.”

“Listen,” Binney said hopelessly, “I’m going crazy. What am I to do?”

“Do? Nothing. I’ll find some cure. Phone me tonight. I’ll work out some way of neutralizing the elixir, and put you back to normal. Don’t worry,” the Professor comforted. “Er—if you happen to go into that other dimension in the meantime, try and take a camera with you. I’ve always contended that Earth isn’t the only world with life, and I’d appreciate your getting the proof for me.”

He listened to Binney for a time, and then clucked remonstration.

“Oh, of course, if you feel so strongly about it.... Well, I’ll go to my lab and see what I can do. In the meantime, you’ll be safe enough if you don’t get mad. As long as there’s no adrenalin flooding your system, you’re normal. Phone me at eight.”

“All right,” Binney assented, and hung up, his brain in a whirl.

He couldn’t figure it out. No doubt the Professor knew what was happening, but he, Binney, certainly didn’t. Lamb-pies, nuts!

HE went up to his offices. He’d take Susan Blythe out to lunch, and spend the day with her. He never got angry when Susan was near. Then at eight he could ’phone the Professor.

Susan was a charming girl in a neatly tailored gray suit. She had black hair and eyes, and Binney’s heart flipped as he stared at the girl.

She turned from her switchboard.

“Hello,” Binney remarked tentatively.

“Hi,” the girl returned companionably. “You’re just in time. Office closes at noon Saturdays.”

“Swell,” said Binney. “Would you like to—uh—have lunch with me?”

“I’m so sorry, Joe. Tim’s taking me to Coney.” Susan’s face softened at Binney’s crestfallen look. “Why not come along? You can rent a suit.”

“Thanks,” the salesman nodded, and went into the inner office, after a discreet knock. Presently he came out, looking unhappy.

“What’s the matter?” Susan asked sympathetically.

“Oh, nothing. Lost a big order, that’s all. Dennler said I—I—” Binney gulped.

Dennler had, apparently, said plenty, including the plain fool tricks of vanishing salesmen, and the dangers of sudden shock to a man with a weak heart and high blood pressure.

Binney had not dared mention his forthcoming promotion. But the boss had. It was no longer forthcoming.

He tried to forget his grief at Coney. But even there the unpleasant Tim Blake was a thorn in his side. Binney’s rented bathing suit sagged disconsolately on his lean form, while Blake had apparently been poured into his. He bulged with muscles.

Glumly, Binney swam out past the breakers. Swimming was the only thing in which he excelled. As a youth he had won medals for it. His thin body cut through the water with surprising speed and grace.

Susan, however, had a new suit and didn’t care to get it wet. Blake lounged beside her on the sands, grinning fatuously. Binney finally grew resentful enough to challenge Blake to a swim. The latter hesitated, but, after a glance at Susan, agreed.

THERE was method in Binney’s plan. He swam rapidly but not too rapidly, keeping pace with his competitor. Whenever Blake tired, Binney encouraged him. And, at last, the two reached a raft far out to sea. Blake drew himself up, gasping and panting. Thereupon Binney turned around and swam rapidly back to shore, certain of a brief respite before his enemy could muster his strength. Grinning, he disregarded Blake’s furious cries.

But there was little chance to talk quietly to Susan on the beach at Coney. When the girl suggested that they dress, Binney was willing, for he noticed an angry spark in Susan’s eyes as she glanced out to sea where Blake, invisible at the distance, clung to his raft. Later, however, Binney had reason to regret his rashness....

He was strolling along the boardwalk with Susan, toward the station, when a brawny figure in a bathing suit confronted him. Blake’s handsome face was contorted with fury. He expressed his intention of tearing Binney apart and scattering him to the winds.

“Oh, be quiet, you big bully,” Susan said. “Going off and leaving me like that—”

“Sure,” Binney snapped, heartened. “Go chase yourself.”

Thereupon, with a maddened roar, Blake demonstrated the usefulness of kinetic energy by planting his fist on Binney’s lean chest. The latter was hurled back, but scrambled up immediately, glaring. If Susan had not been there, he might have been sensible enough to run. But, instead, Binney ducked under Blake’s roundhouse punch and hit the big man on the nose.

This, as it proved, was unfortunate. Blake bellowed with rage, seized Binney by the throat, and bore him down, kneeling on his victim’s prostrate body. Binney made feeble fluttering motions with his hands. He tried vainly to catch his breath. Meanwhile, Susan had climbed atop Blake and was beating him about the ears in a futile fashion. A crowd gathered.

Humiliation and fury surged up in Binney. He made a frantic, straining effort to throw off his captor, while the blood pulsed and beat in his temples. He felt a momentary blinding shock—

The boardwalk dropped out from under him, and an immense scarlet void engulfed him. He saw Blake’s face, white and terrified, and the wide dark eyes of Susan as the three of them bumped lightly onto a hard surface. Above was a red sky, and a red sun....

The flutter of great wings sounded. Shadows swooped down. A dozen talons gripped the three, and still clinging together, they were lifted.

Reason was blotted out. There was only a mad impulse to hold on—to grip the nearest object. And so the three were carried along, with the wind screaming in their ears.

Only Binney had any idea of what had happened. Those blasted adrenal glands of his — he had grown mad again. And, as the Professor had theorized, his atomic structure had altered so that he was in another dimension. Susan and Blake had come along because human bodies evidently conducted this fantastic power like electricity, just as the Professor had guessed.

FAR down was level ground, hard and white and featureless. They were rising up the side of a great cliff— no, not a cliff, but the wall of a towering building. And Binney recognized the beings who held him. Furry, batwinged, two-headed creatures.

“Nyasta dree urdle,” said one, and Binney moaned feebly. They’d started that again.

The six bat-wings, bearing their human cargo, reached the summit of the building and commenced to swoop across the roof. The featureless flat surface swept past dizzyingly. As yet the three had no time to think or theorize. They simply clung together...

They flew fast, yet it was a long time before the bat-wings hovered above a crescent-shaped wide well in a roof and slowly descended. Looking down, Binney saw a green-paved plaza, with a shimmering pool in the center. He recognized it as the scene of his first arrival in this other world.

They hit the pavement with a thump, Binney underneath. With a moan of stark horror Blake shook free of the talons that gripped him and sprang up. Instantly he vanished.

Just like that. One moment he was there, tall and brawny in the black bathing suit, the next he was quite gone, without a trace. The bat-wings fluttered in confusion.

“Nyasta wurn!” someone said, in an excited tone, and then the talons gripped again. Once more the humans were lifted, only two now instead of three.

Even at that horrific moment, Binney tried to figure it out. The Professor had said human bodies conducted the inter-dimensional power like electricity. To all intents and purposes Binney had within him a live wire. When Blake was in contact with the salesman, Blake, too, got the current. But when contact was broken—

No more current. Blake, no longer in touch with the strange energy that kept him in this red world, had gone back into Earth’s dimension.

But why didn’t that happen to Binney, too? Maybe because of the Professor’s elixir, soaked into- his tissues. Binney could move from one world to another, and remain there, whereas neither Susan nor Blake could. The moment they lost their physical contact with Binney, they returned to Earth.

So Blake was back in New York. And the two others were rising, captives of the bat-winged beings....

The salesman groaned. This crescent-shaped plaza, he felt sure, had been the scene of his advent in the red world. Its pavement was level with the surface of the Holland Tunnel in New York. No doubt Blake was there now.

Susan kept her eyes closed and held tightly to Binney, burrowing her nose into his shoulder. Even at that moment he was thrilled. Then sanity came back, and Binney, looking up at the two-headed things that held him, suddenly wanted to faint.

He didn’t. He felt himself, instead, gently deposited on the roof beside the well that led down to the plaza. For a moment he lay quietly, his arm around Susan, staring at the inhuman red-haired faces, with their huge eyes and pouting mouths. He felt the girl shudder convulsively.

Binney made a faint sound that ended in a gurgle. He tried again, with better luck.

“It’s okay, Susan,” he managed. “Th-they won’t hurt us.”

“Dree,” said a bat-wing, rather cryptically.

Binney started to get up. Then he paused, gripping Susan tightly as a horrible thought came to him. They were high up above the green pavement of the plaza, about two hundred feet. If Binney let go of Susan now, she, too, like Blake, would return to her own world—but a couple of hundred feet above a New York street!

BINNEY shut his eyes at the picture. Susan’s body suddenly materializing between skyscrapers, to plummet down toward the pavement, crashing—ugh!

What had the Professor said some hours ago, over the phone?

“Suppose the accident had happened while you were up, say, in the Empire State? You’d have found yourself in the other world, in empty air over a thousand feet above the ground.”

Now the reverse situation faced Binney. The city of the two-headed beings seemed to be a huge cube, stretching as far as he could see. He was on the roof of it now. If he could return to New York, he would materialize two hundred feet above—well, probably 42nd Street.

Good Lord! If he could only get down to the bottom of that crescentshaped plaza. That was the Holland Tunnel, back on Earth — and the ground level was approximately the same. But there was obviously no way to descend from the endless roof—no stairs or elevators. The winged creatures didn’t need such things.

Binney took a deep breath and squeezed Susan so tightly that she cried out in protest.

“We—we gotta get down!” Binney mumbled, and sent a glance of mingled appeal and horror at the inhuman faces surrounding him. He pointed down and nodded vigorously.

“Urdle nyasta,” said the foremost, but its twin head immediately countered with, “Dree wurn.”

“Orliva,” said another.

But they made no move.

Binney gently shook Susan.

“It’s all right, d-dear,” he whispered. “Open your eyes. We’re s-afe.” The words stuck in his throat.

Susan burrowed her nose deeper in Binney’s shoulder and refused to stir.

“Oh, Joe,” she gasped. “What is it?”

One of the bat-wings reached out an exploratory talon and pulled Susan’s hair. Rather angrily Binney pushed the claw away. Then he went white with terror.

He had almost lost his temper. And that would be fatal. The moment Binney got mad, his adrenal glands would start working. The metamorphosis to another dimension would take place. Binney would find himself, with Susan, high above a busy street with extremely hard pavement....

“Oh, Lord,” Binney prayed, “help me keep my temper!”

Frantically he tried to think of other things. He couldn’t get mad if he were scared to death. So Binney did his best to frighten himself.

That was the best possible procedure to make him courageous. After vainly attempting to convince himself that he was terrified, Binney discovered that he wasn’t. Even the monstrous creatures surrounding him had somewhat lost their air of alien menace. Sure, they were inhuman, but they acted just like a crowd at Coney. Only they didn’t seem to understand—

Binney pointed at himself, at the nearest bat-wing, and then down into the well. Immediately the two-headed creature seized Binney in its talons and spread its wings. He almost lost his grip on Susan before he could recover from his surprise. The girl’s arm slipped through his fingers. Then his hand tightened about her wrist. But he was losing his hold moment by moment.

GROANING, Binney, with his free arm, batted frantically at the talons that held him. The surprised bat-wing settled to the roof, and let go staring with wide eyes.

“You ugly fool!” Binney ground out, drawing Susan’s limp form close “You blasted— No, no. I mustn’t get mad. It—it’s funny. Yeah. That’s what it is. Oh, Lordy!”

Susan had quietly fainted. Binney took the opportunity of removing the girl’s sash and tying one end about his waist, the other about hers. Then, sitting on the roof, he held Susan tightly within the circle of one arm and repeated his gestures downward.

But this time the bat-wings examined him with blank incomprehension. Evidently they’d learned their lesson. They’d tried obeying his gestures before, and it hadn’t worked out.

“Urdle ah dree,” said one. “Dree wurn.”

This gave Binney a new thought. Imitating as well as he was able the strange, thin voice, he piped:

“Urdle ah dree.”

Immediately the bat-wings roused into furious activity. They fluttered and hopped about, in clumsy, bizarre excitement. Queer whistling noises came from the pouting lips.

“Well,” Binney thought, “we’re making friends at least.” Seeking to cap the climax, he squeaked, “Dree wurn.”

Instantly a dead silence fell. The bat-wings settled back into the circle and stood around regarding Binney with blank idiotic looks. They made no move even when the salesman cursed violently and shook his fist at them. Then he remembered.

“No,” Binney moaned. “No temper. No temper!”

He shut his eyes, breathed deeply, and started counting. At thirty he looked again, saw the same blank faces, and bit his lip.

If only the creatures would do something! Why did they just stand there, looking foolish? What did they expect? For what were they waiting? Did they expect Binney to sprout wings and fly away?

“No temper. One, two, three, four.... I’m glad Susan’s unconscious. If she got hysterical and tried to get away from me—”

As though she understood, Susan woke up and began to struggle. Vainly Binney tried to soothe her.

“It’s okay, Susan. Just relax—”

But the girl took a hasty look at the two-headed monsters around her, screamed, and redoubled her efforts to pull free from Binney’s arms. The man felt a tug of irritation.

“Keep quiet!” he snapped, with nervous emphasis. “I can’t—” He stopped quickly.

“No temper. One, two, three ... stop it, Susan ... four, five, six ...”

“Let go of me! Oh!”

“Urdle ah dree?” asked a bat-wing politely.

“Stop it ... seven, eight, nine ...

“Dree wurn.”

“No temper. Ten, eleven—ouch!”

With lamentable lack of restraint, Susan had sunk her small white teeth into Binney’s forearm.

“You little—” Binney was almost lost. Blinking with pain, he stared blindly at Susan’s frightened face and babbled, “I love you. I love you. I love you!”

Thereupon he proceeded to prove it by knocking the girl cold. It was a neat sock, well timed and right to the point of the jaw. It spoke well for Binney’s self-control that he struck in sorrow, not in anger.

Susan wilted. Binney, deeply grieved, drew her limp form once more into the protection of his arm. He glanced up at the interested, extraordinary faces around him, realized helplessly that they didn’t intend to do anything about them, and once more began to count....

THE huge red sun had covered a perceptible part of the crimson sky, and Binney was still counting. But nothing had happened. The two-headed creatures remained, doing absolutely nothing except irritate Binney, who could not afford to lose his temper just yet. If there were only some way of reaching ground level! But, short of wings, that was impossible.

How long could this keep up? They might stay up here for days and starve to death, or he’d get so weak he might lose contact with Susan. Couldn’t the bat-wings understand anything?

“You and your blasted urdle dree,” Binney growled bitterly. “What does it mean, anyhow?”

“Ah nyasta,” said one helpfully.

Time was growing short. Binney found it growing harder and harder to keep his temper. Moreover, Susan would not remain unconscious forever, and he could not keep continually knocking her out. If there was only some way—

Binney probed his memory. He couldn’t get down from the roof. If he materialized two hundred feet above New York, the result would be fatal. Unless—unless something broke his fall. But what could? What—

Water!

“Wow!” Binney said in a heartfelt voice.

Of course! A two-hundred foot drop into water would be dangerous and unpleasant, but not fatal. Especially in Binney’s case. Water was his element. The nearest body of water—on Earth— was the Hudson River.

But how to locate it? How to find the right spot, so that he could get mad, return to Earth, and drop neatly into deep water? There were no landmarks—

There was one. The crescent-shaped plaza. That, to Binney, marked the entrance of the Holland Tunnel. All he had to do was go to the inner curve of the crescent, turn his back, and walk… how far?

How long was the Holland Tunnel?

Binney tried to visualize it, to remember. Abruptly he was seeing himself seated in the bus beside white- haired, talkative Dennler, idly counting the metal doors. One hundred and ninety-five doors. Perhaps a few more. That didn’t matter. But they seemed to be about forty feet apart. That came to—let’s see—about 8,000 feet. If he paced off four thousand feet he’d be approximately in the center of the Hudson River, though, of course, in another world.

That was it! Binney stood up and drew Susan’s limp body across his shoulders. She wasn’t heavy, but Binney wasn’t a heavyweight himself. He staggered toward the edge of the crescent-shaped hole in the roof, peered down, and then turned his back. He began to pace his distance carefully. Two steps — five feet. Ten feet. Fifteen. Twenty....

Sixteen hundred steps later Binney stopped. The bat-wings had followed him at a short distance, piping inquiringly.

“Dree?”

“Urdle dree?"

“Urdle dree nuts,” said Binney, having at last found the spot he desired. If his calculations were correct, he was over the center of the Hudson River, so to speak. He sat down, holding Susan, and proceeded to lash himself into a fury.

Only, now, he couldn’t get mad.

ANY psychologist could have told Binney the reason, but there was none handy. Poor Binney realized that he was now as cool as a cucumber. The gaping, blank faces of the bat-wings no longer roused him to rage.

He called them vile names. He thumbed his nose at them, and invited them to come within his reach. They declined. Still Binney couldn’t get mad.

He pinched the place where Susan had bitten him and tried to rouse himself to frenzy about that. But it was useless. After all, he loved the girl.

He thought of Tim Blake and the catastrophic fight, and almost became furious at the muscular Blake, but then started to chuckle at the look on the man’s face when he was being carried through the air. Where was Blake now? In New York, in his bathing suit.

Binney blessed the lucky forethought that had made Susan and himself change to street garments before being transported into this strange world. Two people in swim-suits clambering out of the Hudson would attract far more attention than a man and a woman who had, apparently, fallen overboard from a ferry.

But such thoughts were futile. Binney groaned. He could let go of Susan, and she’d be transported back to Earth —but she couldn’t swim very well. Unconscious, she’d fall to death. Binney was utterly helpless, he realized. After having figured out a means of escape, he didn’t have enough nerve to get mad.

“You poor spineless cockroach,” said Joe Binney to himself. “You poor miserable imitation of a brainless weak-fish! You can’t even get mad if you want to. Why, you yellow—”

Binney felt a mad inclination to seize himself by the throat and strangle himself. He was suddenly furious with bitter, violent rage at this helpless, stupid person called Joe Binney.

“Urdle dree,” he heard a bat-wing say, and then—

Bang!

The world exploded around Binney. He felt a giddy shock of disorientation. The roof melted away before him. For a second he saw the Hudson River far below, and then he was falling, Susan tightly clasped in his arms.

Quite by accident, Binney had become tremendously angry with himself.

He kept his head, maintaining his own and Susan’s body vertical, struggling for balance and still trying to relax.

Splash! The impact sent the breath from the man’s lungs as they hit the water feet first and shot downward. Susan was jerked out of his arms. He thrashed frantically in chilly water, and then followed up the sash that still bound Susan to him. Having captured the girl, he started swimming upward desperately.

His lungs were bursting by the time his head broke through the surface. To the left were the Palisades of Jersey, to the right, the towering buildings of Manhattan. His guess had been right —his calculations correct.

Panting heavily, almost breathless he swam shoreward. Susan would need some medical attention, but she’d be all right, he felt confident.

TWO days later Joe Binney and Susan sat in the private office of Horton, the boss. Horton’s plump face was beaming.

“So you get that promotion,” he said, “and a raise. I’ve had dozens of new orders come in already. It was marvelous publicity, Joe—marvelous. The papers splashed it all over the front page.”

“There just wasn’t any other news,” Binney said modestly, but Horton waved him to silence.

“Gallant, my boy, gallant! Diving into the Hudson after Susan had fallen from that ferry-boat—you might both have been drowned. It was a master stroke of yours to mention Pinnacle Novelties to the reporters.”

“Oh, Susan did that,” Binney murmured. “In fact, she made up—I mean she explained everything to the reporters.”

Susan surreptitiously pressed Binney’s hand.

“So you are now the branch manager,” Horton observed. “Er—your first duty will be to discharge Mr. Blake.”

Binney’s eyes opened wide. “What? I don’t—”

“Haven’t you read the papers? Well, I don’t suppose you got past the first page. But Blake has disgraced the firm. Made a spectacle of himself. Drunk, no doubt. He was shouting and screaming like a madman.”

A quick glance passed between Susan and Binney.

“B-but what did he do?” Binney asked.

“Got drunk and ran down Forty-Second Street in his bathing suit,” Horton snapped indignantly. “The man must have been mad!”

“Yeah,” said Binney, and hastily escorted Susan out of the office. Safely hidden beside a filing cabinet, he kissed her.

“That was a dream, wasn’t it?” Susan asked, when she drew away. “About that—”

“Sure,” Binney assured her. “Just a dream. Don’t worry about it. It won’t happen again.”

And he sighed deeply, remembering the hours he had spent in a Turkish bath, under the supervision of the Professor, sweating out every last drop of the weird elixir his tissues had absorbed. But it had been worth it. There would be no more excursions into an alien world....

“Urdle dree,” Binney murmured involuntarily.

Susan’s eyes widened. “What?”

“That,” said Mr. Joe Binney, “means I love you.”

“Oh.” Susan smiled, and added softly, “Urdle dree.”

END