He had been prudently asleep during those previous shifts he had gone through while outbound from Dorsai; and, of course, he had learned years ago what to expect. In addition, he was fully medicated; and the shift itself was over before it was really begun. In fact, it took place in no time, in no conceivable interval at all. Yet it had happened; and some inextinguishable recognizing part of him knew and remembered that he had been born apart, down to the most fractional elements of his being, and spread to the wide universe and caught and collected and reassembled some arbitrary point light-years from his destruction. And it was this memory, not the shift itself, that made him falter, for one short step, before he took up again his steady march back to his stateroom. And the memory would stay with him.

He continued on down the corridor; but he was far from having run his gauntlet for the day. As he reached the end of one section, Anea stepped out from the cross-bar corridor there that was the exact duplicate of the one, several sections down, where he had first met her. Her green eyes were afire.

“You’ve been seeing him!’’ she snapped, barring his way.

“Seeing . . . oh, William,” he said.

“Don’t deny it.”

“Why should I?” Donal looked at her almost with wonder. “Surely, it’s nothing to make a secret about?”

She stared at him.

“Oh!” she cried. “You just don’t care for anything, do you? What did you do . . . about what I gave you?”

“I gave it back to its owner, of course,” said Donal. “There was no other sensible thing I could do.”

She turned suddenly so white that he almost reached out to catch her, certain she was about to faint. But she did no such womanish thing. Her eyes, as she stared at him, were shocked to enormity.

“Oh!” she breathed. “You . . . you traitor. You cheat!” and before he could make a move or say a word to stop her, she had whirled about and was running off down the corridor back in the direction from which he had come.

With a certain wry unhappiness— for, in spite of his rather low opinion of her common sense, he had really expected her to listen to his explanation—he took up his solitary walk to his stateroom. He traveled the rest of the way without meeting anyone. The corridors, in the aftermath of the phase-shift were deserted by prudent passengers.

Only, passing a certain stateroom, he heard sounds of sickness from within; and, looking up, recognized the number on its door as one he had looked up just now on his recent trip to the library.

It was the stateroom of ArDell Montor; and that would be the man himself inside it now, unmedicated and racked by the passing of the phase shift, fighting his own lone battle with the universe.

FORCE-LEADER

“All right, gentlemen,” said Hugh Killien.