The Discoverer thought-beamed, "I said it is not space as we know space. Let me put it this way: the magnet can draw metal to it without touching the metal. So this space-cancer can attract objects by reaching out for them, drawing them toward it—through a sort of purplish mist—by some power of magnetic attraction."
Thor made a sound as if he understood, and the Discoverer went on, "The segment of the rebel-universe came through the true universe, and touched you—"
"Touched my house on the Midwestern campus."
"Yes. It drew you within itself—"
"But Karola and Slag! They came out of the air right in the middle of my living room."
"They were in the magnetic pull, too. And where their space and this space met, was the middle of your living room."
Thor looked at Karola, whose forehead was wrinkled in tiny furrows as she followed the thoughts of the Discoverer. Slag was off to the right, chasing a fat rabbit bounding ahead of him in terror.
The Discoverer went on, "I sought entrance to this world many eons ago. It was one of the few spots in space I had never visited. Again and again I sought to enter, but its strangely twisted space-time continuum proved too much. Always I failed.
"And then, when I was visiting—I am almost all brain and it is a habit of mine to roam a bit—I was visiting a planet of what you call the Magellanic Cluster when everything went blank and I found myself tugged through the purple space and landed here, stretched across a rock."
Thor said, "You claim you can roam, mentally. Away from your body, that is."