Myrtle said: "Put it on." Her face was a mask, an enigma. Her voice stayed low, completely devoid of emotion. "I'll kill you if you don't."
Horning stared into his wife's eyes. They were inscrutable, hard and blank and black as twin balls of polished onyx.
Myrtle's lips parted. Her jowls quivered. She steadied the pistol.
Very slowly, very wearily, Horning rose. Wordless, he crossed to the transdimensional registration unit and strapped it on.
"Go over in the corner," his wife ordered. "Stand with your face against the wall."
Horning obeyed. He wondered whether Myrtle intended to shoot him in the back.
Whatever it was, he decided, he didn't much care.
Metal scraped on metal. Something thudded on the floor. The hoarse wheeze of Myrtle's breathing, the slap and shuffle of her mules, sounded loud in the stillness.
After another moment, Myrtle said, "Turn around."
His wife now wore the other transit unit, the one by means of which Horning's counterpart had crossed the barrier between the parallel worlds.
"All right, Raymond." She gestured to the light-loop's glowing, door-like frame. "Go through."
"No." Horning put flat finality into his voice. "You don't understand what that frame is for, Myrtle--what lies on the other side--"
"Don't tell me what I don't understand!" For an instant the old stridency rang in Myrtle's words. "I've read those things you wrote--remember? Your notes, too. I know what I'm doing!" She thrust the pistol forward. "Go on! Go through!"
Once again, Horning studied his wife's face, to no avail. He made a wry mouth. Then, turning, he walked up the ramp, and stepped through the light-loop's pulsating, tube-laden frame.
The silver plain stretched endlessly before him ... infinitely vast, infinitely lonely.
Horning shivered a little and swung about.
A bulky figure loomed close at hand, framed in the light-loop's glow. A moment later, Myrtle was beside him, staring across the shimmering wastes wide-eyed. She cringed before the immensity and desolation of it, knuckles white, face slack and waxy grey. Horning could almost taste her fear.
She shook as with a chill, not answering. Then, peering down into the scanner screen, she fumbled with the calibrated knobs that shifted the scene from plane to plane.