Colonel Sagen seated himself behind his desk.

"Major," he began, clearing his throat, "you imagine me to have a daughter. You're positive of it. You even visualize her so well, that you remember something about how you were going to marry her."

"You're not going to talk me out of anything on that score," Lance shot back.

"Perhaps, we don't intend to. Colonel Nordsen, here," Sagen indicated the psychiatrist, "has flown in from HQ to chat with you. He can explain the technical aspects of the phenomenon that has thrown you better than I can. I'd advise you to listen to him. He's just what you need."

"Just what I need? What else do you intend to do? Hypnotize me, so you can erase all my past?"

The colonel scowled. "Look here, major. You co-operate and learn to keep your mouth shut, we may be able to restore you to duty. But if not ... well, what happens then will be entirely up to Nordsen. It could mean a padded cell. The development of hyperspace exploration has to go on, whatever happens to you."

"I'll tell you one thing to your face, colonel," Lance replied, hotly. "I'm not off my rocker."

"No one has maintained you were," broke in Colonel Nordsen. "But Colonel Sagen had to throw a curtain around you fast."

"Why?"

Neither officer answered.

Finally, Colonel Sagen said, "I think you'd better continue with him, Colonel Nordsen."

Nordsen was a youthful-looking man for his rank, yet prematurely balding. He wore thick-shelled glasses.

"Major Cooper," Nordsen began, "let's go back to when you put the Cosmos XII through its first jump through hyperspace. How well do you recall your experience?"

"I'll never forget it. You Earthbound kiwis should try it sometime."

"Did you experience a feeling ... perhaps, rather uncanny ... that the whole thing had happened to you before? What psychologists call the sense of déjà vu?"

"No, I don't think so."

"Perhaps some other type of phenomenon was manifested? A feeling you'd been split in half, 

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