The chairman's wrinkled hand dropped below the table. He said, "There is only one course of action." His hand came up, and in it a slim gleaming cone. "To eliminate the displaced mind before a re-exchange can be--" Thorn was dimly conscious of Clawly II leaping forward. He heard him begin, "No! Wait! Don't you see--" But although that was all he heard, he knew what Clawly II was going to say and why he was going to say it. He also knew why Thorn II had been able to exchange with him when Thorn II thought he was trapped and facing death on the rooftop. He knew that the chairman's action was the very thing that would nullify the chairman's purpose. At last he had found the sufficient impetus--it was staring at him down the slim, gleaming cone, leering at him even as the chains broke and his mind dropped back from the windows of his eyes into a black, dimensionless pit. The fear of death. X. Three roots there are that three ways run 'Neath the ash-tree Yggdrasil; 'Neath the first lives Hel, 'neath the second the frost giants, 'Neath the last are the lands of men. Elder Edda Thorn did not ask himself why his resting place was dark and stuffy, rocky and dry, or where the stale, sour smell of woodsmoke came from. He was content to lie there and let his mind snuggle down into his body, lull itself with simple sensations, forget the reverberations of its terrible journey. World II still clung to him sluggishly. But like a nightmare from which one has wakened, it could be disregarded. In a moment he would rouse himself and do what must be done. In a moment, he knew, he would know no peace until the warning had been given and all essential steps taken, until the invasion had been met and decisively thrown back. He would be a creature of tension, of duty, of war. But for the moment nothing mattered, nothing could break his sense of peace. Odd, though, that the heavy woodsmoke did not make him cough, and that his body was not aching from its cramped position and rocky crouch. Muffledly, as if its source were underground, came a distant howling, melancholy and long-drawn-out, ending on a low note of menace. He started up. His shielding hand encountered a low ceiling of rock, hurriedly traced it to jagged, sloping walls on either side. It was he that was underground, not the howling. What the devil had Thorn II been doing in a cave in World I? Why was he wearing this odd jumble of heavy clothing, that seemed to include thick, stiff boots and furs? Where had he gotten the long knife that was stuck in his belt?