And I had forgotten. The miracle had been pushed back, rejected by the conscious mind. But now I knew: this was the knowledge that I had received from the background briefing device that I had used in my island strong-room before I fled. This was the survival data known to all Old Vallonians of the days of the Two Worlds. It had lain here, unused; the secrets of superhuman strength and endurance ... buried by the imbecile censor-self's aversion to the alien. * * * * * But the ego alone remained now, stripped of the burden of neurosis, freed from subconscious pressures. The levels of the mind were laid bare, and I saw close at hand the regions where dreams were born, the barren sources of instinctive fear-patterns, the linkages to the blinding emotions; and all lay now under my overt control. Without further hesitation I tapped the stored Vallonian knowledge, encompassed it, made it mine. There again I approached the barrier, spread out across it, probed in vain-- "... _vile primitive_...." The thought thundered out with crushing force. I recoiled, then renewed my attack, alert now. I knew what to do. I sought and found a line of synaptic weakness, burrowed at it-- "... _intolerable_ ... _vestigial_ ... _erasure_...." I struck instantly, slipped past the impervious shield, laid firm hold on the optic receptor bank. The alien mind threw itself against me, but too late. I held secure and the assault faded, withdrew. Cautiously I extended my interpretive receptivity. There was a pattern of pulses, oscillations in the lambda/mu range. I tuned, focussed-- Abruptly I was seeing. For a moment my fragile equilibrium tottered, as I strove to integrate the flow of external stimuli into my bodiless self-concept. Then a balance was struck: I held my ground and stared through the one eye I had recaptured from the usurper. And I reeled again! Bright daylight blazed in the chamber of Ommodurad. The scene shifted as the body moved about, crossing the room, turning.... I had assumed that the body still lay in the dark but instead, it walked, without my knowledge, propelled by a stranger. The field of vision flashed across the couch. Ommodurad was gone. I sensed that the entire left lobe, disoriented by the loss of the eye, had slipped now to secondary awareness, its defenses weakened. I retreated momentarily from my optic outpost, laid a temporary traumatic block across the access nerves to keep the intruder from reasserting possession, and concentrated my force in an attack on the auricular channels. It was an easy rout. I seized on the nerve trunk, then instantly reoccupied the eye, co-ordinated its impressions with those coming in along the aural nerves ... and heard my voice mouth a curse. * * * * * The body was standing beside a bare wall with a hand laid upon it. In the wall a recess partly obscured by a sliding panel stood empty.