"Nick! Nick, darling!"

He awoke, his face drenched with sweat and his stomach a tight knot of fear. He reached out, in his fright, and grabbed the woman at his side, pulling her into his arms to hold her tightly. She stroked his hair, kissed his face and whispered soothing words into his ear.

"What is it, Nick?"

He relaxed his grip and laid his head back on the pillow. In the bright light of the moon, he looked at her and returned to himself. Those monsters! So vivid!

"Nightmare," he croaked hoa.r.s.ely.

She smiled, her lips glistening in the moonlight, and kissed him gently.

"The apple pie," she suggested. "Nightmares are usually caused by eating before bed."

"It was so real," he muttered. "So real. I ... I was on another planet ... I wore a blue uniform with yellow stripes on the legs and my name was Lors, or Lars. The natives, horrible monsters, were in a state of revolution ... they killed my driver. I was alone and they were all around me..."

"Science fiction," she cooed and stroked his hair. "I think it's a good sign. All you ever read, for relaxation, was science fiction. Your dream was probably a story you once read and your mind put you in the hero's place."

He sat up and looked at her. "Did I cry out?"

"You were mumbling. I couldn't hear what you said. Then you began sobbing and thrashing about."

Nick ran his fingers through his hair and over the back of his neck, the reality of the dream almost too much for him. It wasn't an ordinary nightmare where he would be running, with a huge monster panting in pursuit. This was frightening. Like a memory. Like some d.a.m.ned fantastic memory.

He stood up and patted her shoulder. "Go back to sleep, Beth," he told her gently. "I'm going downstairs."

"Shall I turn on a light?"

"No. It might cause the neighbors to wonder." He walked to the door of the bedroom. "The moon is bright enough."

He walked into the hall, feeling his way in the dark places, and down the stairs into the living room. As he sat in the chair near the window, he thought about the dream. It bothered him, because it was unlike a dream; it had the weird consistency and logic of a memory, yet seemed almost supernatural ... h.e.l.l, what kind of thing had huge, yellow eyes and stood nine feet tall? What sort of a world had a violet sky and grey-green rocks? The whole d.a.m.ned thing had the scent of a Walt Disney movie, the colors vivid and sharp, the landscape seemingly done by a watercolor brush.

_Thista._

Apparently it was some kind of planet and he hoped that Beth was right.

Would it be possible for a man to get so confused via a crack on the head, that he believed he had lived through the literature he'd once read? What would he dream about next? _Macbeth?_ _Treasure Island?_ Christ, what a world!

If he could get to a doctor, a headshrinker, it might all be ironed out.

They would get things squared away in a short while, but h.e.l.l ...

suppose I'm Public Enemy Number One, or something. Thirteen months! In thirteen months kings have been broken, dynasties crushed ... What had happened to him in the thirteen months that he had been out of touch?

One thing he was sure of; he hadn't been laying around. In a stretch of time like that, he had worked, eaten, slept, loved ... Maybe he had married again! An almost comical thought, compared to the possibility that he could be a killer, a bank robber; there were a million things he could have done.

A psychologist? Nope. That was out of the question, until he knew more about Nicholas Danson. And learning more about himself would be a real problem. The cabin that Beth had spoken of would probably show him nothing. After a period of a year, there would be d.a.m.ned little trail left to hunt along. There would be almost nothing. Whatever had been there, would have probably been sifted through by the guy, the detective, Nolan Brice. Brice! Of all the friends for him to have, he had to be saddled to Brice! He'd have to be real careful where that character was concerned because the slightest slip would set the cop on his trail like a blood hound.

The crackup? Now there was something. He would always be stuck with the question of how he had managed to get out of that mangled ma.s.s of metal with merely cuts and bruises. But he could chalk that up to dumb luck, or something. The thing that worried him was had he left a clue that could trace him here? He had burned the flying suit ... he had tried to cover it up to Andy ... A lot of things about the smashed aircraft bothered him. Things like the flying suit; it had been made of strange material; but h.e.l.l, he'd burned that thing. There would be no problem with that.

Almost without realizing it, he found himself staring at the car that was parked on the other side of the street. The streetlight gleamed on the black paint of the Chevrolet sedan and he thought of what Andy had told him earlier about the men who had been interested in finding him.

Looking at the car much closer, he could see the two men sitting in it.

The knot of fear returned to his stomach when he saw the light shining on the driver's blond hair.

The men from Andy's gas station!

"Nick?"

It was Beth. She had followed him down and he could see her framed in the doorway at the foot of the stairs. She had slipped into a nightgown that, in the moonlight, was more alluring than if she had been nude. She started to speak, but he hissed at her for silence.

"Come here, Beth," he instructed, "and don't put on a light."

Her bare feet whispered on the rug as she came to his side in obvious bewilderment. He pointed out the car and the two men, telling her about how they had inquired after him at the gas station. She listened quietly.

"What do they want?" She asked, when he'd finished.

She was sitting on the arm of the chair, leaning against him to study the car. The soft pressure of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s was disturbing and conjured up memories of early in the evening.

"What do they want?" She asked again.

"I don't know. That's something I have to find out. Listen, give me a minute to get to the upstairs window. Then snap on the light and move around. They're probably looking for me and I want to give them the impression I'm not here."

"All right, Nick."

He got up and threaded his way to the stairs and up to kneel before the bedroom window that fronted on the street. Through the gap in the curtains, he could see the car plainly. The light snapped on downstairs.

For a moment, nothing happened; the men merely sat in the car and watched the house. Finally the car began moving down the street with its lights out. Then, out of range, the driver flicked on the lights and the car disappeared. The downstairs light snapped off and a moment later Beth came into the room.

"Nick?"

"Here."

"Perhaps they saw the crash..." she began, but he cut her off short.

"No one saw me crash."

"I mean, later," she explained. "After all, a wrecked car on a highway would..."

"Car? Beth, I didn't crack up in a car. I crashed on a wooded mountain in a private plane."

"Oh, darling, don't be silly! You've never been in a plane in your life."

In the darkness of the room, Nick could only stare in stunned amazement at the moonlit outline of his wife.

CHAPTER FIVE

Detective Lieutenant Nolan Brice stood in the brush near the wrecked aircraft, watching the men move about in the light of several spotlights that had been set up by the National Guardsmen who had roped off the area. The thick blackness of the surrounding forest, plus a glance at his watch, told him that dawn wasn't too far away. FAA investigator d.i.c.kson, a thin, stringy ex-pilot stepped around the scrambled bits of wreckage and offered a light to the dead cigarette in Nolan's mouth.

"Thanks," Brice said and blew the smoke to the night. "What d'you make of it, Mister d.i.c.kson?"

d.i.c.kson shrugged and pushed his snap-brim hat back with a blunt forefinger. "Dunno. It's pretty dark to see much, but it's no private plane."