Change that? thought the Director. He shook his head slowly, grimly. But the Earthman Rhodes had been a problem, for in the age-old ruins of Balata 'kai he'd stumbled on the manuscript of _The Book of the Dead_, a five thousand year old document which had first propounded the beliefs of metempsychosis. _The Book of the Dead_ was a dangerous document, a document which could ignite Kedak in revolutionary conflagration, for it showed clearly that the so-called gods of the earliest Kedaki civilization were not gods at all and their so-called revelation of metempsychosis not a revelation at all but a clever trick calculated to win them a life of ease at the expense of gullible subjects. What am I thinking? the Director asked himself. The Earthman Rhodes is dead, of course. He couldn't possibly be alive. I'm as bad as the warden, but the warden is a fool who knows nothing.... Still, even if the warden is a fool and Rhodes is dead, _The Book of the Dead_ is still missing. And if there is one chance in a million that Rhodes lives, then every stone on this planet must be turned to find him.... CHAPTER IV "Tired, my young friend?" Dr. Quotis asked. "Disappointed, I guess," Rhodes admitted. "I know how you feel. For three days people have been coming here to see you with the hope that you might be a missing relative. But--" "But none of them knew me," Rhodes finished bleakly. "And yesterday they were only a trickle." "All it will take is one." "Doctor, I don't have to tell you I owe my life to you, but--well, I'm restless." "You're young," Quotis said with a smile. "I've got to get out and find the lost threads of my life. I'm well enough, you said so yesterday." "But a man in your condition--" "Amnesia? So what? I'm perfectly able to take care of myself. It isn't as if I'm on an alien world or something. Kedak is my home. Kedak is--" "Do you believe in reincarnation?" Quotis asked abruptly. For a while Rhodes did not answer. And, when finally he did, it was with a question of his own. "Why do you ask that?" "Because it might answer at least one question for you: whether you are of high or low birth. If of low, then...." Rhodes said with a smile, "Since I haven't jumped on your back and started gouging out your eyes, I guess I wasn't Kedaki baseborn." "You highborn Kedaki certainly make no attempt to hide your irreverency!" "Well, why should they?" said Rhodes. "After all, the system is clearly one which...." "They? Did you say they?" "I guess I did." "Doesn't that strike you as rather odd?" Rhodes shrugged, then said, "Look, I'm all confused. I just want to get out of here and find my life and pick it up where I left off." "But you know nothing of your past. Where will you go?" "I might as well start at the prison. That's where they found me, isn't it?"