Darkness smothered him immediately. There was a sudden terrifying sensation of weightlessness, of falling. He kept pushing and pushing, although there seemed to be nothing to push against except swirling, spinning blackness.
Then, suddenly, he was standing on another Hobson's Hill.
The four black boxes had gone, but the blurred arch of light was still there. He fell to his knees, clutching in terror at the grass, trembling and breathless: the switch from one world to another was always unnerving. Immediately between worlds, the sensation of being in no world, of stepping into a bottomless abyss, always left him ragged with panic. He had not made the trip many times before, but he doubted if he would ever get used to it.
The town looked substantially the same as the one he had just left, though he was pleased to note that Finlay's Lumber Co. was no longer in sight. It was proof that he had made the switch successfully. For some reason, Finlay never seemed to have established his business anywhere but in Charles Mead's world. There were similar changes in every world—some large changes, some small—but at least Hobson's Hill was always there, which was why he chose it as his jumping-off point.
Charles Mead set off down the hill and along the highway into town. In a telephone booth, he searched the directory and then began walking again with a new eagerness in his step.
Ten minutes later, he turned onto the front porch of a small, neat brick bungalow. He was about to press the bell button when he paused, listening. From inside the house, he heard voices yelling—a man and a woman—strident with anger.
Charles Mead smiled faintly and rather smugly and put his finger to the button. The voices stopped yelling as the bell jangled somewhere in the house. A moment later, the front door opened and, at the same time, he heard a woman's high heels stamping through to the back of the house. Then a door slammed.
The man in the doorway wore moccasins, jeans and a red plaid shirt. Except for the general sloppiness of his dress compared with the unwrinkled neatness of Charles Mead's expensive gray slacks and sports jacket, the pair could have been twins. Both were slim and tall with the slightly stooped appearance of tall men. Their short, sandy hair and wide blue eyes gave them both a boyish look.
"Chuck Mead?" Charles Mead asked. This one was sure to be called Chuck, he thought.