Temporary Resident by Philip E. High (New Worlds #159, February 1966) opens with a Terran representative called Savaran almost rammed by another car on a planet called Spheriol. Savaran continues his journey but, further down the road, he sees his own car being towed—it appears to have side impact damage. Matters become even odder when he arrives at his Embassy to find it staffed by people he doesn’t know. The next morning he wakes up to see a doctor standing by his bedside who explains that he is in “transition”, and is on another “plane of existence”.
Later he meets people from his life who he thought were long dead, and discusses Terran defence plans with one of them. At this point (spoiler) the story cuts to a Spheriol minister talking to a man called Detrick, who is explaining that Savaran’s experience is all a ruse (he is at a false location which is staffed with actors) set up to let them defeat the anti-interrogation brain psychographing he has undergone.
The final twist, which has Savaran turning up at the building where the Minister and Detrick are holding their meeting, sees Savarand fade out of existence after he arrives there. The Minister then reveals to Detrick that he is the one experiencing a plane of existence shift, but a real one, and not a pretence like Savaran. Or something like that—it’s one of those stories whose endings can lose you.
This doesn’t convince, and it’s essentially the same old Terran spy nonsense that had been appearing in the magazines for decades already. And a Phil Dick-ian twist at the end doesn’t improve it much.
* (Mediocre). 5,250 words.