Problem reading in and displaying an image...

I'm trying to read in a 1x1 pixel file and display it, basically to assist in setting 3rd party cookies (our other affiliated sites that don't follow under the same domain.. it's really sloppily set up, but thats another story).. The problem I have is the script is just hanging, sits there and does nothing, constantly trying to load.. setcookie("$cookieName", $u, $expire, "/"); setcookie("$cookieName"."logon", $t, $expire, "/"); $fd = fopen("http://www.armytimes.com/images/spacer.gif", "r"); $image = fread($fd, 5024); fclose($fd); Header("Content-type: image/gif"); echo $image; exit(); now, if I comment out the Header and echo $image; lines, the script works fine, it reads in the file with no problem it seems. But when I turn those 2 lines back on, it totally hangs. does anyone have any ideas? I am totally stumped. Thanks, Chad