When Jimmy Haverill, an assistant lecturer at Hampton University, met the man with the absurd name of Dr. Dumpkenhoffer, who was, moreover, head of the newly-founded Parapsychology Research Department, he was quite unaware that the meeting was to divert the whole course of his life. It was, after all, rather difficult to take such a man - and such a Department - at all seriously.

Haverill's involvement in the good Doctor's experiments - if such they could be called - was so casual that it was manifestly ridiculous to imagine the role Haverill was playing as having been preordained.

For he had no way of knowing, nor could he tell from any previous experience since he had not any, that his own growing fascination with the world he was uncovering was a terrible threat that could trap him into a vortex from which he would not want to escape.