He rode the elevator to the ground floor, and he felt his mind working with a clarity and a precision which he had seldom experienced before. This time he knew he would win.

Shrewdly, before leaving the building, Bennett looked out through the glass pane in the door first. He waited only a moment before he saw the long gray sedan as he had expected. They would not trap him again. Ducking back, he walked rapidly toward a side exit.

Night had fallen by the time he reached the carnival building. He did not ring the bell. Instead, he walked to the rear, climbed the stairs of a fire-escape, and softly opened the window of a bedroom.

He stepped inside just as softly and stood listening for breathing. He heard none. This was probably too early for Lima to be in bed.

The bedroom door was open. Bennett could see a light coming from another part of the apartment—probably the living room. He paused to steel himself for what he must do. The time had come when he would have to be savagely ruthless.

He found Lima sitting on a couch, reading a book. He suspected that she still had some control over his mind and he had no intention of letting her influence him. She must be killed before she could read his intention.

"It didn't work." Bennett spoke just loudly enough to startle Lima into raising her head.

As she looked up, he shot her squarely between the eyes.

In an agony of frustration, Bennett saw the flesh of her forehead remain clear and undisturbed. He knew he could not miss at this range, yet she was unhurt. He lowered his sights and shot at the white neck beneath the fair head. She still sat there, returning his gaze, unperturbed, unmarked by the bullets.

He pumped the four remaining bullets into her body. The only part of her that moved was her lips.

"It's no use, Leroy," she said. "Haven't you guessed? You are still in your dream. You can't kill me there."

Suddenly the implication struck him with its awful simplicity.

"Good God!" His voice rose. "Do you mean I've never been out of my dream?" He hesitated while the thought sank in. "My remembrance of coming out of it was only part of the dream itself," he murmured. "That was why you were able to turn time backward at will."

A cold calmness returned to him.

"Tell me," he said, "am I still in the dream?"

"Yes," Lima replied.

"Then I demand that you free me now!"

"As you wish," Lima said sadly. "And may God help you."

Bennett wrenched his body from the couch on which it lay and struggled to his feet. Though the dream had seemed real enough, he could look back on it now and see it as any other dream.

He breathed easier, and then stopped abruptly when he heard a voice behind him say, "You are still a dead man!"

Bennett whirled and found himself facing Tournay. And Tournay held a pistol aimed at his heart.

Bennett turned desperately back to Lima. His lips formed her name, but the sound died almost before it was uttered. This time, he saw, she would not help him. Her features had hardened and no mercy or compassion registered on them.

"There is no escape," she said.

A fleeting thought went through his mind of springing at Tournay and trying to reach him before the gun could be fired. But one glance at Tournay's face made him realize how futile—and fatal—that would be.

Tournay's finger tightened on the trigger of his gun and Bennett thought ahead in despair to what was to come. One thing he knew: He did not want to die! Was there no way out?

The answer came like a cry of relief. There was a way—Thone! The city of his enigma. Tournay and Lima could not harm him there.

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