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.