time-encystment chamber. He has insisted, bless him, on undergoing the experiment himself. He insists against the will of the Tellurian Government, the Council, everyone. He is noble. 'It would not be fair,' he says, 'to allow another to take the chance. It is my experiment; and it is only right that I must be the guinea pig.' Ah, my brother is so noble, so fair, as are all hypocrites! How simple it is, Joha! I kill him. I become Professor Albert Baarslag. I enter the time-encystment chamber as my illustrious brother. I am put into a state of suspended animation. And I awake in five hundred years—a free man!"

Joha knelt down, a look of worship coloring the green of her half-human face. "You are so clever," she said. "So patient and so thorough, and so brave."

"Killing him, that is all that really matters," said Owen. "The encystment, that is only secondary. But it is ingenious, isn't it—to become the man I kill? There can be no punishment, no ridiculous retribution. Revenge is futile; in fact it isn't really revenge at all, if the avenger is made to suffer for his acts of vengeance."

Owen grasped Joha's slim arm, spun her around. His mouth twisted with cruel pleasure as he saw the slight painful writhing of her lips. "You may begin your slow death from loneliness now, Joha. I'm leaving for Vencity tonight."

She looked sadly resigned as she came close to him, slid one hand up and into the thick matting of his hair. "You need rest, Owen. You were out there two days in the swamp getting that last three kihn of aukweed without sleep. You should rest well before you go into danger. You only slept an hour."

He lay down with a long sigh. "Yes. That is a good idea. I'll need all my powers when I go to Vencity. But those—those horrible nightmares." His face drained, oozing sudden sweat at the memory. "Always the nightmare. The same one. But each time I dream, the nightmare gets more horrible! There must be some cause for it. If I could only find its cause. As soon as I assume Albert's identity, perhaps I can use the psychiatric scanner on myself and find the basic cause."

But her cool fingers stroking his brow sent him back into the sleep he dreaded. Immediately her hands withdrew. "No, Owen, the psychiatric scanner will never find the cause of this nightmare. It's artificially endowed, Owen, dear. It has no roots in your twisted childhood, or in your cruelty. And the scanner could never find its source. Because I am its source, and I am alien."

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