As he swam through the thick atmosphere, narrowly avoiding collisions with the coniferous trees that packed the forest in the alternative universe’s Langley Virginia, it didn’t take long before Abner found his first companions from back home.   One of the security agents, rigid as stone, could easily have been mistaken for a lifelike statue standing beside a pine tree.   If not for his companion: quite obviously mad, the second agent was twisting and turning like a drowning man, futilely trying to fight the cloying, viscous atmosphere, his mouth opening and shutting in silent screams — his voice unable to carry through the honey-like atmosphere.

Unable to bear the sight of the man’s distress, thinking, “I did this!   For the sake of my own freedom, I reduced this poor wretch to this!”   Abner aimed the handset at them both, pressed the blue and yellow buttons together quickly twice, to send the two men back to the underground complex.

Despite the guilt he felt over the condition of the two men, Abner knew he had no time to linger.   He could not return to Earth until he had travelled far enough through the alternative universe so he would return outside the labyrinth-like complex, and preferably far away from Langley.   Also he realised it wouldn’t be much longer before General Pendercoste sent a team after him.   So, trying his best to forget the sight of the two security guards, Abner pressed on, or rather, swam on.

From time to time he found others who had been sent over: frozen or unfrozen, sane or insane, one incinerated to ashes (the ashes suspended in the honey-like atmosphere, forming an eerie grey silhouette of the man they had once been), and sent them all back to the CIA complex.

On his second encounter one of the agents fired at Abner, however, the gun failed to operate in the heavy atmosphere and Abner sent the guard back also.

*      *      *

“Well we all seem to be ready now,” said General Wallace T. Pendercoste, as though he intended to go with them, looking over the security squad.

Although normally they would have been armed to the teeth, carrying a rucksack full of weapons, for this mission the team were lightly kitted up.   They knew from past experience that most conventional weapons were useless in the invisible dimensions and would only mean extra weight to carry.   Instead they were made up like frogmen, without air tanks, but with wet suits, flippers, and carrying spear guns — which, would operate in the honey-thick atmosphere — as well as ropes and handcuffs to bind the old man, in the event that Abner could be brought back alive.