In the Scarlet Star

On a sweltering afternoon in 1930 El Paso, struggling writer John Stewart encounters a destitute electrical engineer named Jimmy Miles, who claims to have discovered an extraordinary artifact in a pawnshop window—a massive, scarlet, star-shaped crystal of unknown origin. Miles has spent his last dollars building a crude apparatus to test the gem, and he demonstrates that electrical current makes objects vanish through the crystal, only to return altered and aged. Convinced the crystal is a doorway to another world in the Fourth Dimension, Miles persuades Stewart to fund the final modifications needed for a human crossing.

With a notarized waiver in hand, Stewart activates the device while Miles steps onto the glowing scarlet star. The engineer disappears into a rosy mist, and Stewart holds the switch for exactly one minute, praying the reversed magnetic field will draw him back. When the mist clears, a muscular, half-naked savage erupts from the crimson haze—Jimmy Miles, but transformed by years of survival in a primeval alien world.

Miles recounts his astonishing journey: a lush, perpetually cloudy jungle world where time flows faster than on Earth, where he was rescued by a hairy savage named Harr Garr, and where he witnessed the dawn of fire, the struggle against monstrous beasts, and the rise of a primitive tribe. Now returned to 1930, Miles carries the scars and strength of a man who has lived years in another dimension—and he has much more to tell.