He sat up, shaken but uninjured, except for his throbbing head.
All he could see in any direction was corn.
He stood, looking around. Endless rows of corn shifted in a gentle breeze beneath the midday sun. Where was he?
“This better be a cornfield on Earth,” he muttered, trying to brush mud from his clothing, succeeding only in smearing it around.
He still had Ferrin’s hand. He set it down and examined himself. His only clothes were the shirt and the pants. They were crude, and the mud made them look much worse. He had no shoes. He hoped he would not have to walk far.
The hand began to crawl across the ground. Jason picked it up and gave it a slap. The fingers opened and closed rapidly as if to express outrage.
“You’re my only souvenir,” Jason told the hand. “I hope you realize I have to get back there somehow.”
Jason shoved the hand into one of the two deep pockets in the front of his trousers. Whenever it moved, Jason slapped it firmly.
It took Jason ten minutes to unbind himself from the sack of stones. He checked inside the bag, to be sure he wasn’t leaving anything interesting behind. It only contained rocks. He took out the rocks and placed the hand in the bag.
Jason struck off in a straight line. He figured if he went straight long enough, he would find civilization. Somebody had planted and was tending this corn. Eventually he would reach a road.
Before long he came to a farmyard. It had a nicely painted house and a barn. A couple of trucks and four-wheelers were parked in the big driveway. A tire swing hung from a branch. Some toy cars had been left near the swing. Ferrin had been right. This was Earth.
For so long all he had wanted was to get home. But now all he could think about was getting back to Lyrian. He couldn’t leave Rachel stranded there! He couldn’t deprive his friends of the knowledge he now possessed!
He went to the front door of the house, opened the screen, and knocked. A middle-aged woman in a sleeveless shirt answered the door. “Can I help you?”
He suddenly felt unsure what to say. All he knew for certain was that he couldn’t tell the truth. “Hi. My name is Jason Walker. May I please use your telephone?”