"So where is this?"
"This is your house, of course, but we're not quite there yet. We're in what you would call—oh, another dimension."
Ernie reached for the drink and sniffed it. Its smell fitted the situation. "And what does that mean?"
"Oh, you and I have lived in the same vicinity all our lives, even crossed each other's paths, but we are in different dimensions—different worlds in the same place."
"You mean like Mars and Earth?"
"I mean like Mars in Earth, or vice versa," the man answered.
Ernie jumped up and started for the ladder. "I'm getting out of here—"
"Don't be a fool! Climb that ladder and you'll butt your skull in!"
"I came through the hatch. I'll leave through the hatch."
"But we've shifted thirty degrees. You told us to. Now the top of the ladder is thirty degrees away from the door of the laundry chute, which is quite impossible to reach, my friend, because there is perhaps dirt and a foundation and everything else in the way. We'd have to tear out our own structure and gouge into yours. This we cannot do. Too expensive."