Part 1

SO MANY WORLDS AWAY....

By Dwight V. Swain

Horning's married life was unbearable so he sought peace in another dimension. But was his past somehow linked with other worlds?...

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy July 1952 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

It was nearly four o'clock in the windowless basement laboratory when Horning screwed tight the last connection.

He straightened, shrugged the kinks from his back and shoulders, and wiped his hands clean on a wad of waste. Crossing to the battered desk in the corner, he pushed back Margaret's picture, got out pen and paper, and wrote briefly:

_Dear Myrtle_,

_It's time we faced facts. I never should have married you after Margaret died. My work means everything to me; I can't give it up. But you detest the whole business of being a scientist's wife. Knowing how you feel about the "shame" of divorce, I won't ask you to let me leave you legally. There's a better way out. By the time you read this, I'll either have breached and bridged the space-time continuum to another plane, or I'll be dead. In either case, you'll be happier with me gone. My patent royalties and insurance will take care of you as long as you live._

_Good luck, and I'm sorry it didn't work out._

_Raymond._

Horning weighted the letter down in the center of the desk. Then, pushing back his chair, he picked up Margaret's picture.

She smiled up at him as always, so real the sight of her brought a tightness to his throat. When he closed his eyes, he could almost hear her voice, rippling with gay, gentle laughter. He felt her lips on his ... her dark, silken hair against his cheek.

Only Margaret had lain in her grave for three years now....

Horning drew a quick, shallow breath. Sliding the photo from its frame, he tucked it into the breast pocket of his shirt.

Back at the workbench, he heaved up the bulky transdimensional registration unit, strapped it on and adjusted the scanning scope to the proper angle against his chest. Dial by dial, circuit by circuit, he checked the light-loop's control panel.

Everything was ready.

This was the moment he'd worked for ... the great gamble, the final test. Not even Myrtle could stop him now.

Palm slick with sweat, he gripped the master switch and shoved it shut.

Purple light flared in the tubes set in the light-loop's door-like metal frame. The blank wall behind it took on the familiar translucent glow.

Horning opened the intensifier channels and increased the alpha and gamma readings.

The light turned silver. The wall behind the framework disappeared.

* * * * *

Horning stepped onto the ramp that led up to the frame. In the humming stillness he could hear the sound of his own heartbeat, drumming faster and faster. The sharp, chlorine-like smell of ozone filled the air.

For an instant, then, he hesitated, acutely conscious of an uncontrollable trembling. Sweat drenched him; the sour stench of it cut through the ozone.

He thought: _Maybe they're right. Maybe I'm crazy to think I can cross the barrier between the worlds._

Upstairs, the front door slammed. The house echoed with the thud of heavy footsteps.

Myrtle's footsteps--!

Horning sucked in one final, desperate breath and stepped through the light-loop's frame.

It was so simple, really. Just like going out a doorway, into a limitless expanse of shining silver plain. He felt no pain, no shock, not even slight discomfort.

Swiftly, skillfully, he adjusted the transdimensional registration unit's dials.

Light flickered on the scanning scope's screen, a shapeless blur.

Horning twisted the focussing knob. The blur resolved. A scene took form.

Taut with excitement, Horning stared for the first time into another world.

The place was an apartment, he decided. But what an apartment! It shimmered like a modernist's sparkling dream. The decor was brilliant, unique in style. Metal and plastic combined in sleek, functional forms.

Nor was this all. A man stood by a table, back to the screen, mixing a drink. While Horning watched, he restoppered the bottle and stepped out a door to the right.

Horning frowned. He had a strange feeling, somehow, that he'd seen the man somewhere before.

Shrugging it off, he lined up the crosshairs on the screen with infinite care and switched the projector drive to high.

Before his very eyes, the shining silver plain dissolved. The shadowy walls of the room on the screen rose about him. Furnishings appeared in misty outline.

Horning pressed the reintegrator button.

The walls lost their shadow. The furnishings took on solid form.

Horning came to rest with a heavy thud, sprawled in the center of the floor.

Behind him, there was a stir of sudden movement; a choked exclamation.

Before he could turn or regain his feet, a man's tight voice clipped, "Don't move--or you die!"

Horning froze. "There's no need to be frightened," he said quickly. "I'm merely a--a traveler. I've come here from another plane--"

"I understand perfectly!" the voice snapped back. "I happen to be an authority on such matters. That's why I say--if you move, you die!"

Horning's spine prickled. Just as he'd had the feeling he'd seen the man on the screen before, now it came to him that the voice, too, was strangely familiar.

* * * * *

Behind him, shoes scraped the floor. Fingers probed warily at his pockets, his belt, his armpits. Then they went away again and the voice said, "All right. Now take off that outfit."

Wordless, wooden-fingered, Horning unstrapped the transdimensional registration unit's harness.

"Get up!" the voice commanded.

Horning obeyed.

"Now sit down on that lounge in front of you, with your hands on the arms."

Horning crossed to the divan and turned around. For the first time, he faced his captor.

It was the same man Horning had seen on the screen. He stood poised, cat-footed, back against the gleaming metaloid wall. An ugly, snub-nosed pistol of strange design was in his hand.

And his face was Horning's face.

Horning went rigid--shocked, half unbelieving.

"Down!" rapped his counterpart.

Horning sank numbly to the seat.

"Who are you? Why did you come here?"

Some of the numbness left Horning. Cold anger came in its place. "Why ask me?" he lashed back. "I thought you knew all the answers."

The man's knuckles whitened on the pistol. "I want the truth!"

Horning laughed. Of a sudden he felt bold and reckless. "I told you the first time. I came from another world, a different plane--"

The gun moved in a flat, incisive gesture. "I know all that! The parallel worlds, the Worlds of 'If'. Parmenides and his theory of the Eternal Now. The idea that life's a book with an infinity of pages; that every event automatically creates coexisting planes, one for each possible outcome--" Horning's captor broke off. "But _why_? What drove you to cross the barrier?"

Horning shrugged. "It was Myrtle--" he began wryly.

The other started; fell back a step. "_Myrtle--?_"

"My wife. I wanted to leave her."

"You mean--you breached the continuum for no better reason...?"

Horning laughed curtly. "For my part, I found it a very adequate reason."

For a long moment the other stared at him. Then, abruptly, he, too, laughed. The snub-nosed gun's muzzle lowered.

"You amaze me," his captor chuckled. He bowed. "Permit me to introduce myself. I'm Doctor Raymond X. Horning."

"My coexisting counterpart on this plane--?"

"Of course. The alter ego is bound to serve as a focal point when you cross the barrier." The man pocketed his gun and walked over to the table. "Let me mix you a drink. After such an experience, you need a pickup."

* * * * *

Horning leaned back, studying the other obliquely and trying to fathom the sudden change in his attitude.

Too, he still marveled at the similarity between them. They were so alike they could pass as twins, he decided. Identical twins. The only difference between them lay in details of expression--the sardonic twist to the other's mouth; the chill, penetrating gleam in the deep-set eyes.

His counterpart handed him a glass. "You amuse me, my friend. But I'm afraid you don't realize the full implications of what you've done."

"Such as--?" Horning queried, sipping at the drink and finding it good.

"Such as the fact that interdimensional transit is not only a logical impossibility, but a very practical menace."

Horning frowned. "Why?"

"Because it puts two identical personalities on one plane." The man with Horning's face dropped into a chair and hunched forward. "Take our own situation as an example. You're married to a shrew, a termagant. You want to leave her."

"Yes."

"I, on the other hand, have a young and charming wife who holds a considerable fortune in her own right. Consequently, it would be ever so much to your advantage to switch places with me." Horning's counterpart brought up one square-knit hand in an expressive gesture. "What's to prevent your murdering me and moving in?"

Horning nodded slowly. "I see what you mean."

"I'm convinced it's actually happened a few times already," the other asserted. "Though of course it's not generally known. Fortunately, we've never worked out the principle on this plane." He paused to drink, then set down his glass. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully, and he nodded in the direction of the transdimensional registration unit. "Just how does it work, Doctor? I've always wondered where my own experiments went wrong."

For a moment Horning hesitated, then shrugged. "See for yourself." Kneeling, he unsnapped the unit's back plate and exposed the circuits. "The registration dials are set with my own world as zero. You pick up others in the scanning scope as you go, within the limits of the projector drive. After that, it's just a problem of reintegration."

Beside him, the man who was his coexisting self craned. "So that's it! I never dreamed it could be so simple."

"I used a light-loop to help break through the barrier," Horning explained, sketching out a hasty diagram. "It helps to increase the power output--"

"Of course." The other was down on the floor now, probing into the unit's workings. "I've developed all the component elements at one time or another, but when it came to combining them properly, I always managed to miss out."

* * * * *

Horning rose and drained his glass. "Well, you know now," he observed. "For my part, I'm ready to start work on some other project, now that I've gotten to this world."

"I was afraid you'd say that," the other Doctor Raymond X. Horning remarked. Straightening, he snapped shut the back panel of the transdirectional registration unit. "But ... it's not easy."

"What do you mean?"

Horning's counterpart got up. "I mean you can't stay in this world. You're going to have to leave again."

"To leave--!" Horning turned sharply.

"Yes." Beneath the blandness of the other's manner, a new note rang, grim and unyielding. "As I pointed out, interdimensional transit's a logical impossibility. There's no way of integrating two identical personalities, two selves of the same man, into a highly organized society such as this one."

"And for a reason like that you'd try to force me out--?" Horning took an angry step forward.

But his counterpart jumped back, out of the way. His hand darted to his pocket, whipping out the snub-nosed pistol.

Horning came to an abrupt halt.

The blandness was gone from the other's face now. The deep-set eyes were cold, the sardonic lines set.

He said: "There's another reason, Doctor. I like my life; I like my wife. And I'm afraid the temptation to relieve me of both might prove too great for you."

"You're being absurd," Horning snapped. "Not to mention insulting."

"Am I?" His counterpart smiled thinly. "I doubt that, my friend. You see, we're one, really. Though we live on separate planes, we both feel the same drives, the same tensions, the same impulses."

"You're talking nonsense!"

"No nonsense, Doctor." The pistol in his counterpart's hand was very steady. "Given the proper pressure, a strong enough motive, I know that even I could kill. In your situation, I'd certainly feel justified in murdering you. So I have no intention of giving you the chance to make me your victim."

"So--?" snapped Horning.

"So, you're going to leave now," his coexisting self answered bluntly. "You can be thankful I'll even let you go alive." He gestured with the pistol. "Strap on your unit. And be assured I'd have no hesitancy about shooting you if I have to."

Horning clenched his fists, caught up in a churning sea of fury. "So help me--!"

The gun centered on his belly. "I'll give you till I count ten," his counterpart clipped tightly.

Horning bit down hard. Pivoting, he hoisted the transdimensional registration unit from the floor and strapped it into position.

"In case you have any foolish ideas of coming back, let me warn you that I intend to set up a force barrier around this place," the man with his face observed with grim malice. "If you try to breach it, I'll kill you on sight."

Wordless, still seething, Horning switched the projector drive to reverse.

The room grew shadowy about him. His counterpart faded.

Horning pressed the disintegrator button.

* * * * *

Of a sudden, room and counterpart were gone. Once more Horning stood alone in the vastness of the shining silver plain. His head throbbed dully; he felt incredibly tired and drained.

For a moment he almost considered going back to his own world ... back to Myrtle.

But nightmare memories of the empty, bitter life they'd led rose up to steel him, all hatred, conflict, tension ... so different from the happiness of the other days, the days with Margaret.

Margaret.... He touched her picture, still safe in his pocket.

There were other worlds--an infinity of them. Somewhere, sometime, he'd find the one world he sought.

Again, he turned the transdimensional registration unit's dials.

Light flashed on the scanning scope's screen. Stiff-fingered, Horning focussed.

Here the scene was one of bleak desolations, painted in a hundred drab shades of grey. A murky sky pressed down on sullen hills, thick underfoot with powdery, ash-dry dust. Seared shafts that might once have been trees thrust up here and there like skeletal fingers. In the foreground rose the crumbling corner of a ruined building, base buried deep in rubble.

A man crouched there--ragged, bone-gaunt, grey as the shattered walls at his back. He clutched a club in one claw-like hand, and the strain of utter panic, despair, stood out in every taut, harsh-drawn line.

Before the man, hemming him in, ranged a dozen great, six-legged, wolfish beasts of a fearsome genus Horning had never seen before. Snarling, slavering, they crowded in closer and closer, huge fangs bared.

With a chill of horror, Horning flipped the magnifier across the scanning scope's screen.

The beleagured man's face leaped up at him, sharp and clear.

"No--!" Horning choked. "No!"

For the other's fear-blanched face was his face, too ... the face of another coexisting self, doomed to live and die in this grey, desolate world.

Even as Horning cried out, one of the great wolf-things sprang.

The man jerked back and lashed out with his club. The beast fell short, battered down.

But in the same instant, another of the creatures lunged, from the other side. Its hideous, slashing fangs closed on the man's club arm.

The impact bore the man to his knees. Before he could recover, a third of the wolf-things was at his throat. Blood gushed, a sharp scarlet accent in a world of grey.

Horning squeezed his eyes tight shut in a frenzied effort to shut out the horror. Spasmodically, he spun the transdimensional registration unit's dials.

Again there was a flicker of light. Hands still atremble, Horning focussed on it.

A new world came alive before him.

* * * * *

This time, the scene was laid in what appeared to be a cheap cafe. A throng of loungers lined the bar set against the far wall. But their shabby clothes were of a cut and material unknown to Horning. The grimed, poorly-executed murals struck a note of jangling discord, as if even the arts here were keyed to a different plane.

In the foreground, a man gone flabby with fat slumped on his arms at a table, a bottle half full of greenish liquor before him.

A sudden commotion stirred at the far end of the room. The loungers milled and drew back.

Four men in sack-like purple uniforms pushed through the crowd with cold arrogance. Their features had an oriental cast, and they carried drawn swords of strange design.

The first of the quartet came abreast the table in the foreground. Stepping aside, he gestured contemptuously towards the man slumped there.

The other three troopers swaggered up and jerked the man bodily from his chair.

For the first time, Horning saw the sodden man's face.

Again, as in the other worlds, it was his own.

Now, the fat man shook his head blearily, as if trying to blink the haze of drink from his eyes.

The leader of the four uniformed men slapped him savagely, first on one side of the face and then the other.

Horning's coexisting self sagged to his knees.

The leader of the men in purple kicked him in the stomach.

Horning's counterpart vomited.

The men in purple laughed and threw their prisoner down at full length on the floor with all their might. Then, catching him by the feet, they dragged him bodily out of both drinking house and range of the scanning scope's screen.

Shuddering, Horning stared off across the shining silver plain. Of a sudden he had no heart for searching through other worlds; knew that he would not have till time had dimmed the memory of this day.

It left him no choice but to go back to his own plane ... back to Myrtle.

And if she'd found his note.... He shook his head in wry dismay.

But he had no other course left open. Carefully, he turned the transdimensional registration unit's calibrated dials back to zero ... manipulated the controls.

The light-loop's tubes blazed and pulsated on the scanner screen, so bright they obscured everything beyond. The frame materialized before him, rising like a shimmering, translucent gateway amid the empty vastness of the silver plain.

* * * * *

Heavy-footed, heavy-hearted, Horning stepped through it, back to the basement laboratory that lay in his own world.

And there was Myrtle. Head thrust forward, one thick arm belligerently akimbo, she stood by the desk, reading Horning's note.

Horning stopped short.

Myrtle's glance flicked to him. Her eyes, black and beady, drew to fury-glinting, fat-rimmed slits.

Horning stumbled from the ramp, fumbling at the transit unit's harness.

But Myrtle was upon him in three walloping strides--clutching his shirt-front, shoving her face close to his. An aura of cheap perfume, stale face powder, clothes that could have done with more frequent laundering, washed over Horning in unpleasant waves.

"You--!"

She spat the word with such venom that her face shook.

Horning tried to speak, but no words came.

"Leave me, will you--!"

"Myrtle--"

She struck him across the mouth.

Horning's head reeled. He tried to twist free.

But Myrtle's hand was still locked in his shirt-front. Savagely, she jerked him back and hit him again.

Horning staggered. His shirt ripped. Margaret's portrait fluttered from his pocket to the floor.

Myrtle went rigid. Eyes dilating, she stared at the fallen picture.

Horning tore loose her hand and scooped the photo from the floor.

Teeth bared, nostrils flaring, Myrtle closed in upon him. "So that's it!" she cried shrilly.

"What--?"

"So you thought you'd go back to her, that's what! You figured you'd find her in another world--"

A chill ran up and down Horning's spine. He tucked the picture back in his pocket. "Myrtle, you don't know what you're saying--"

"Oh, don't I?" His wife laughed wildly. Grey hair fell across her forehead in snarled disarray. "Maybe I know more than you think, Doctor Raymond X. Horning! I've read those things you wrote--all that craziness about the other worlds. But I didn't know _why_ you wanted to go there till now."

Horning fumbled with the transdimensional registration unit's straps. Unslinging the bulky case, he lowered it to the floor. He dared not trust himself to speak.

But Myrtle closed in upon him, clawing at him. "Admit it!" she shrieked. "Go ahead! Tell me to my face you'd rather have that--that slut than me--"

Horning wheeled. His hands shook. "Myrtle, I've taken every word from you that I intend to," he said tightly. "Get out of my laboratory! Now! This instant!" Myrtle's nails raked at his eyes.

* * * * *

Before he could recover from fending off the blow, she had snatched Margaret's picture from his pocket.

"I'll show you!" she cried, shrill and strident. "I'll let you see what I think of her, the dirty little tramp!"

She spat full in the face of the picture.

Horning hit her.

She lurched back two tottering steps, tripped, and sprawled on the floor.

Horning strode to her, jerked Margaret's photo from her hand, and wiped it clean.

He said: "I'm through. Whether you like it or not, I'm filing for divorce tomorrow."

His wife dragged herself up to a sitting position, her face a mask of hate and cunning.

"Go ahead," she goaded. "Go _right_ ahead, Doctor Raymond X. Horning." Her voice rose, took on new and even more bitter overtones of malice. "But ... just don't blame anyone but yourself for whatever happens to your precious apparatus."

Heaving herself to her feet, she stomped out of the laboratory and off up the basement stairs.

Fists clenched, Horning watched her go. Then, wearily, he crossed to his ancient desk and dropped down in the chair.

As always, Myrtle had won. The first time he left the house she'd be at work here--breaking down the door, smashing his equipment and his dreams.

And as for Margaret.... He smoothed her picture. But the features blurred and his eyes began to burn, till at last he pushed the photograph back in his pocket and slumped forward on his arms.

How long he lay there he never knew. Later, sometimes, he thought perhaps he'd slept.

Then, dimly, he became conscious of a sound ... a humming, persistent vibrance that grew steadily louder. It dawned on him that he'd forgotten to turn off the light-loop's master switch.

He got up and started towards the control panel.

In the same instant, he glimpsed a shadowy figure, framed in the door-like scaffolding of tubes and metal that formed the gateway to the shining silver plain that lay like a shimmering no-man's land between the parallel worlds.

Horning came up short, staring.

The figure outlined in the light-loop grew sharper. A man lurched through the frame, into the room. His face was Horning's face, and he staggered under the weight of a transdimensional registration unit, plus a great, bulging, cumbersome bundle slung across his shoulder.

Horning started forward.

His visitor said, "Hold it!" sharply and brought a snub-barreled, too-familiar pistol into view.

Horning stopped in his tracks.

"You mean--it's you--?"

The man from beyond the barrier laughed and spilled the bulky bundle off his shoulder, down onto the floor. "Of course, Doctor! I thought I'd return your visit." He prodded the bundle with his toe. "I even brought you a present."

"But ... I thought you said you'd never developed a successful transit unit...."

"I hadn't, till you came along and showed me how. As I told you, I'd worked out the components. Once I had a chance to look over your unit, integrating them was no job at all."

"But why...?"