"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.