rself on local
conditions. Then she went to the capital city, Darsh, in eastern
Europe, and enrolled as a student at something called the Independent
Institute for Reincarnation Research, having secured a letter of
introduction to its director, a Dr. Harnosh of Hosh.

"Almost at once, she began sending in reports to her home
organization, the Rhogom Memorial Foundation of Psychic Science, here
at Dhergabar, through Zortan Brend. The people there were wildly
enthusiastic. I don't have more than the average intelligent--I
hope--layman's knowledge of psychics, but Dr. Volzar Darv, the
director of Rhogom Foundation, tells me that even in the present
incomplete form, her reports have opened whole new horizons in the
science. It seems that these Akor-Neb people have actually
demonstrated, as a scientific fact, that the human individuality
reincarnates after physical death--that your personality, and mine,
have existed, as such, for ages, and will exist for ages to come.
More, they have means of recovering, from almost anybody, memories of
past reincarnations.

[Illustration: ]

"Well, after about a month, the people at this Reincarnation Institute
realized that this Dallona of Hadron wasn't any ordinary student. She
probably had trouble keeping down to the local level of psychic
knowledge. So, as soon as she'd learned their techniques, she was
allowed to undertake experimental work of her own. I imagine she let
herself out on that; as soon as she'd mastered the standard Akor-Neb
methods of recovering memories of past reincarnations, she began
refining and developing them more than the local yokels had been able
to do in the past thousand years. I can't tell you just what she did,
because I don't know the subject, but she must have lit things up
properly. She got quite a lot of local publicity; not only scientific
journals, but general newscasts.

"Then, four days ago, she disappeared, and her disappearance seems to
have been coincident with an unsuccessful attempt on her life. We
don't know as much about this as we should; all we have is Zortan
Brend's account.

"It seems that on the evening of her disappearance, she had been
attending the voluntary discarnation feast--suicide party--of a
prominent nobleman named Garnon of Roxor. Evidently when the Akor-Neb
people get tired of their current reincarnation they invite in their
friends, throw a big party, and then do themselves in in an atmosphere
of general conviviality