a last effort, he twisted his right shoulder
inward. His cheek slid along the dirt and he lay on his side without
strength. His legs pushed forward in a steady jerking movement as he
fought to quiet his quivering muscles.

Gradually a soothing lethargy bathed Johnson's body. His pains
vanished, and the sickness left his stomach.

But something was wrong--terribly wrong!

Slowly he climbed to his feet and stood looking about him. He was
still on the narrow arm of the Strip. On either side of him banks of
white clouds, with the consistency of thick smoke, billowed and curled
about the Strip--but somehow they left its pathway clear.

Johnson shook his head. The wrongness, he guessed, was in his own
mind. But he was unable to determine what it was. Desperately he
marshalled his scattered thoughts. Nothing. He took one groping step
in the direction from which he had come--and staggered back from a
wall of pain as tangible as a concrete structure.

He had no choice except to go forward. There was something he must do,
he realized, but what was it? With the question came the answer to
what was troubling him.

His memory was gone!

Or, at least, a great gap had been torn through it as though carved
out by a giant blade. Briefly, despair threatened to overwhelm him.

"Hold it!" Johnson spoke aloud, and the words sobered him.

All fears became worse when not looked at. He had to bring this
disaster out into the open where he could face it; where he could
assay the damage. He had always taken pride in having a logical mind,
with thought processes as clear and orderly as a bookkeeper's ledger.
Closing his eyes, he went swiftly over his recollections, placing each
in its appropriate column.

When he finished he found the balance extremely unfavorable, but not
hopeless. On the asset side he remembered: His name. Donald Johnson.
Right now he was on Nature's Moebius Strip, on the planet, Marlock.
There was some man he had been following.... The rest was on the
liability side of his balance sheet.

* * * * *

His name remained: All other memory of his own identity was gone.
There was no recollection of his reason for being on Marlock, or whom
he had been following or why. That left him little with which to work.

On the other hand, he mused, he might never be able to get off the
Strip, so that didn't matter much. He doubted his ability to stand the
stress of penetrating that electric curta