Then, abruptly, I was aware of myself--not the gross mechanism of clumsy bone and muscle, but the neuro-electric field generated within the massive structure of 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, driven me to this dark corner. I was a fugitive within my own skull. For a timeless time I lay stunned, immured now as the massive stones of Bar-Ponderone had never confined me. My basic self-awareness still survived, but was shunted aside, cut off from any contact with the body itself. With shadowy fingers of imagination I clawed at the walls surrounding me, fought for a glimpse of light, for a way out. And found none. * * * * * Then, at last, I began again to think. I must analyze my awareness of my surroundings, seek out channels through which impulses from sensory nerves flowed, and tap them. I tried cautiously; an extension of my self-concept reached out with ultimate delicacy. There were the ranked infinities of cells, there the rushing torrents of gross fluid, there the taut cables of the interconnecting web, and there-- Barrier! Blank and impregnable the wall reared up. My questing tendril of self-stuff raced over the surface like an ant over a melon, and found no tiniest fissure. I withdrew. To dissipate my forces was senseless. I must select a point of attack, hurl against it all the power of my surviving identity. The last of the phantom emotions that had clung--for how long?--to the incorporeal mind field had faded now, leaving me with no more than an intellectual determination to reassert myself. Dimly I recognized this sign of my waning sense of identity but there was no surge of instinctive fear. Instead I coolly assessed my resources--and almost at once stumbled into an unused channel, here within my own self-field. For a moment I recoiled from the outer configuration of the stored patterns ... and then I remembered. I had been in the water, struggling, while the Red soldier waited, rifle aimed. And then: a flood of data, flowing with cold, impersonal precision. And I had deftly marshalled the forces of my body to survive. And once more: as I hung by numbed fingers under the cornice of the Yordano Tower, the cold voice had spoken.