ose were facts; no haze could
sweep them from his mind or take away that heritage.

And again there was the lightening of the pressure, the slight recoil,
which could only be a prelude to another assault upon his last
stronghold. He clutched his three facts to him as a shield, groping for
others which might have afforded a weapon of rebuttal.

Dreams, these Warlockians dealt in and through dreams. And the opposite
of dreams are facts! His name, his breed, his sex--these were facts.
And Warlock itself was a fact. The earth under his boots was a fact. The
water which washed around the island was a fact. The air he breathed was
a fact. Flesh, blood, bones--facts, all of them. Now he was a struggling
identity imprisoned in a rebel body. But that body was real. He tried to
feel it. Blood pumped from his heart, his lungs filled and emptied; he
struggled to feel those processes.

With a terrifying shock, the envelope which had held him vanished. Shann
was choking, struggling in water. He flailed out with his arms, kicked
his legs. One hand grated painfully against stone. Hardly knowing what
he did, but fighting for his life, Shann caught at that rock and drew
his head out of water. Coughing and gasping, half drowned, he was weak
with the panic of his close brush with death.

For a long moment he could only cling to the rock which had saved him,
retching and dazed, as the water washed about his body, a current
tugging at his trailing legs. There was light of a sort here, patches of
green which glowed with the same subdued light as the bushes of the
outer world, for he was no longer under the night sky. A rock-roof was
but inches over his head; he must be in some cave or tunnel under the
surface of the sea. Again a gust of panic shook him as he felt trapped.

The water continued to pull at Shann, and in his weakened condition it
was a temptation to yield to that pull; the more he fought it the more
he was exhausted. At last the Terran turned on his back, trying to float
with the stream, sure he could no longer battle it.

Luckily those few inches of space above the surface of the water
continued, and he had air to breathe. But the fear of that ending, of
being swept under the surface, chewed at his nerves. And his bodily
danger burned away the last of the spell which had held him, brought him
into this place, wherever it might be.

Was it only his heightened imagination, or had the current grown
swifter? Shann tried to ga