It all ended suddenly. I was Fred Ellis, dazedly opening my eyes on the table. The thunderous crash had been merely the click of a switch.

"Ellis?" Dixon was sweating as he chafed my wrists. "Ellis, are you all right?"

I stared at him in a frozen fashion.

"You brought me back into my body?"

"And just in time, I'd say!" exclaimed Burke. "You were in a ghastly coma—I insisted we cut it short."

Dixon had seized eagerly on my words. "You mean, you were really out of your body? Your mind was free for those moments?"

"Only partly free," I mumbled. "I was still linked to it. But even so, I was just beginning to remember something—"

It was fading in my mind, even as I tried to tell about it. Frantically, I sought to grasp those vague, vanishing memories.

"Something about a place called Aarl! And I thought my name was T'Shal, and—and I can't remember, now."

"Ellis, try to remember!" Dixon urged. "Think hard, man!"

The harder I tried, the more swiftly receded those fast-fading memories. It was all gone already from my brain.

We talked it over for hours that night, after I had recovered from my shakiness.

"We've stumbled onto experimental proof of the most revolutionary theory in scientific history," Dixon said. "Proof that the mind is a wholly different species and entity from the human body, and is merely a symbiotic partner of that body.

"Good Heavens, think of all the things that it would explain! If you could only remember more, Ellis! Think again—what was it about Aarl?"

Aarl? The name vibrated in my thoughts like something faint, far away, heartbreaking.

Did you ever try to remember something and couldn't, yet the very thing you couldn't remember made you feel sad? It was that way with me.

I knew that Aarl meant something to me, something wonderful and terrifying. But I couldn't remember what it was.

"There's a possible explanation of your quick forgetfulness," said Dixon finally. "The 

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