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replied.
    Samuel grinned. “I have an idea, Dad.”
     

Chapter 10
    They got the large household fire extinguisher out of the coat closet, along with a belt. Samuel showed how they would strap the extinguisher to Steven’s back with the hose leading to his hand. “If you can point the nozzle in the opposite direction of where you want to go and then squeeze the trigger, maybe it’ll move you where you want to go,” he said.
    “Worth a try,” Steven agreed.
    They headed out to the site and found the vortex still in place. After securing the extinguisher in place, he told them to watch for the rope to move as he was propelling himself away from the portal. “It should feed out pretty quickly,” he said. “If it’s slow like it was yesterday, assume that this scheme isn’t working and go ahead and haul me back in.” They agreed and he made ready to enter the strange void again.
    Samuel pulled the locking pin on the extinguisher and Steven stepped into the portal.
    Immediately he was struck by how silent it was. The day before, he hadn’t really noticed; his mind was too amazed by all the other people and things he saw floating alongside him. Now the void seemed almost familiar.
    Okay, he thought. Time to see if this will fly . He managed to point the nozzle of the fire extinguisher toward the orange iris of the portal and gently squeezed the trigger.
    White foam began to jet out, billowing into a large cloud in a manner quite unlike it did under more normal circumstances, but it seemed to be working. He moved away from the portal at what seemed to be a reasonable pace. He squeezed harder, and it disappeared into the distance.
    How many of those gates could there be? he thought, realizing that, judging by the number and variety of the occupants of the void, there might well be hundreds, or even thousands. Maybe millions.
    He felt a tug at his waist and realized that he had reached the end of his rope, literally. In order to explore any further, he’d have to give up the security that the lifeline provided, but that would necessitate another return to his “home” portal, as he was unable to untie it himself.
    He began to negotiate the turn toward home, when he felt the snugness of the rope around his waist suddenly go slack, and as he finished the turn toward the portal, he saw the rope seem to slither away, retreating into the shimmering orange light. He was relieved that he had the ability to move around using the fire extinguisher; apparently, when his family had started to pull him back out of the portal, his carefully tied Boy Scout knot had come loose. Guess I didn’t remember the knot as well as I thought I did, he thought, and began to glide back in the direction of the portal.
    He thought that he had only been in the void for twenty minutes or so when he arrived back at the vortex, but when he guided himself into it, he discovered that it was dark and a crescent moon was rising in the east. His family was nowhere to be found.
    He unbuckled the extinguisher, lowered it to the ground, and began walking toward home.
    When he arrived and walked in to the living room, his family greeted him with relieved expressions on their faces, crowding around him, hugging him and smothering him with kisses. “What’s going on?” he asked, confused. “I was only gone for about twenty minutes… but why is it already dark?”
    Lynne looked at him with wide eyes. “Honey…?” she said.
    He looked at her expression and knew something strange was going on. “What is it?”
    “You were gone for two weeks . We waited about ten minutes, like the first time, and went to pull you out, and when the rope came out with you not on the other end,” she began to bawl like a baby, “we all thought you were gone forever. We didn’t know what to do!”
    He sat on the sofa once again, astonished. Clearly the flow of time in the void not only was different than in the regular world, but it varied in its flow as well.
    It would