calmness returned to him.

"Tell me," he said, "am I still in the dream?"

"Yes," Lima replied.

"Then I demand that you free me now!"

"As you wish," Lima said sadly. "And may God help you."

Bennett wrenched his body from the couch on which it lay and struggled
to his feet. Though the dream had seemed real enough, he could look
back on it now and see it as any other dream.

He breathed easier, and then stopped abruptly when he heard a voice
behind him say, "You are still a dead man!"

Bennett whirled and found himself facing Tournay. And Tournay held a
pistol aimed at his heart.

Bennett turned desperately back to Lima. His lips formed her name, but
the sound died almost before it was uttered. This time, he saw, she
would not help him. Her features had hardened and no mercy or
compassion registered on them.

[Illustration]

"There is no escape," she said.

A fleeting thought went through his mind of springing at Tournay and
trying to reach him before the gun could be fired. But one glance at
Tournay's face made him realize how futile--and fatal--that would be.

Tournay's finger tightened on the trigger of his gun and Bennett
thought ahead in despair to what was to come. One thing he knew: He
did not want to die! Was there no way out?

The answer came like a cry of relief. There was a way--Thone! The city
of his enigma. Tournay and Lima could not harm him there.

* * * * *

For just an instant, Bennett's vision blurred. Time paused, and the
next moment he knew he had returned to Thone. The sounds of the alien
city floated up to him and he stirred.

He grasped the sides of his coffinlike bed with fingers that had lost
their sense of touch. He pulled himself up to a sitting position and
looked about him. On one side stood Lima, though now her features were
not those of the implacable, merciless mystic, but rather those of a
woman in love.

She smiled happily and said, "At last you have returned."

Bennett strove to move his tongue and lips to ask questions, but they
refused, as though numbed by long inaction. He turned to his other
side and gazed questioningly at the replica of Tournay who stood
there.

Tournay's image spoke. "We had quite a time bringing you back, Sire.
But now it has been accomplished--for good."

Striving to move his throat muscles, Bennett finally forced a sound,
and then words, through his lips.

"Tell me," he pleaded. "Who are you? And, mo