The T.I.S. agent got just beyond the doorway when he floated unconscious to the deck. Saxon made it to the head of the ladder. Then he, too, lost control over his muscles. [Illustration: _Saxon made it to the head of the ladder. Then he, too, lost control over his muscles._] The mist was like soup, thick yellow pea soup. His last conscious thought was, "So this is the Little Death!" * * * * * "Here! Why are you crying?" asked the big white giant. His voice was gentle, compassionate, and he was naked except for a kilt of a strange gleaming material like woven light. "But I don't want to go," Saxon protested in a reedy, childish tone. He realized in dismay that the giant wasn't a giant at all, but normal and man-sized. "I don't want to go," he heard himself tearfully repeating. They were in a room, the little boy that had been Saxon and the big white man, and a door across the room was opening. The little boy that was Saxon shrank against the man. A woman appeared in the doorway. She was tall and beautiful and dressed like the man in a gleaming kilt. She smiled at Saxon, but he was not reassured. He hung back from crossing the threshold. Saxon saw a troubled look pass between the two. Then the man steeled himself, picked up the squirming boy, carried him through the doorway. It was a strange sensation that possessed the mature Saxon, stretched on the cold deck at the head of the ladder to the engine room. He wasn't dreaming. He was the little boy, and yet he seemed to be outside himself, watching his own actions, appraising himself like the detached half of a dual personality. He was in the time field, Saxon realized. That was it! He was reliving a segment of his life span that had taken place before he was eleven! His heart leaped spasmodically. At last the curtain was being raised on those blank years of childhood! The room into which the man carried him, Saxon saw, was larger that the anteroom and cluttered with strange machinery, ugly machinery. The far wall was a solid bank of windows, through which he could see a green meadow rolling gently away to blue foothills in the distance. Light poured through the windows from a blazing sun high overhead and a second orange sun was just rising. The man deposited him in a chair. Saxon quit thrashing, as the woman fitted a skull-cap over his head, making minute adjustments. A cable led from the peak of the skull-cap to a frightening machine which the woman bent over next, and set in operation. Saxon could feel a rush of thought pouring into his brain. Queer thoughts couched in semantically obscure words. One stood out. "_Earth._" It was repeated many times before he began to comprehend the import of the alien symbols. "_Earth is the third planet of a star known to its inhabitants as Sol!_" With a feeling of strangeness the Saxon who observed realized that the boy was being taught to speak English! * * * * *