I woke up and lay for a long time in the dark without moving, trying to remember the fragments of a strange dream of violence and death. I could still taste the lingering dregs of some bitter emotion. But I had more important things to think about than dreams. For just a moment I couldn't remember what it was I had to do; then with a start I remembered where I was. I had lain down on the couch and pulled the headpiece into place-- It hadn't worked. I thought hard, tried to tap a new reservoir of memories, drew a blank. Maybe my earth-mind was too alien for the Vallonian memory-trace to affect. It was another good idea that hadn't worked out. But at least I had had a good rest. Now it was time to get moving. First--to see if Ommodurad was still asleep. I started to sit up-- Nothing happened. I had a moment of vertigo, as my inner ear tried to accommodate to having stayed in the same place after automatically adjusting to my intention of rising. I lay perfectly still and tried to think it through. I had tried to move ... and hadn't so much as twitched a muscle. I was paralyzed ... or tied up ... or maybe, if I was lucky, imagining things. I could try it again and next time-- I was afraid to try. Suppose I tried and nothing happened--again? It was better to lie here and tell myself it was all a mistake. Maybe I should go back to sleep and wake up later and try it again.... This was ridiculous. All I had to do was sit up. I-- Nothing. I lay in the dark and tried to will an arm to move, my head to turn. It was as though I had no arm, no head--just a mind--alone in the dark. I strained to sense the ropes that held me down: still nothing. No ropes, no arms, no body. There was no pressure against me from the couch, no vagrant itch or cramp, no physical sensation. I was a disembodied brain, lying nestled in a great bed of pitchblack cotton wool. Then, abruptly, I was aware of myself--not the gross mechanism of bone and muscle, but the neuro-electric field generated within a brain alive with flashing currents and a lightning interplay of molecular forces. A sense of orientation grew. I occupied a block of cells ... here in the left hemisphere. The mass of neural tissue loomed over me, gigantic. And "I" ... "I" was reduced to the elemental ego, who possessed as a material appurtenance "my" arms and legs, "my" body, "my" brain.... Relieved of outside stimuli, I was able now to conceptualize myself as I actually was: an insubstantial state existing in an immaterial continuum, created by the action of neural currents within the cerebrum, as a magnetic field is created in space by the flow of electricity. And I knew what had happened. I had opened my mind to invasion by alien memories. The other mind had seized upon the sensory centers and driven me to this dark corner. I was a fugitive within my own skull.