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if you come close!"
    "Are you crazy, Angie?" cried Jim. "I tell you it's me! Do I look like a dragon to you?"
    "You certainly do," said Angie, fiercely.
    "I do? But Grottwold said—"
    At that moment the ceiling seemed to come down and hit him on the head.
    â€¦He swam back to consciousness to find Angie's concerned face hovering over him.
    "What happened?" he said, shakily.
    "I don't know," she said. "You just suddenly collapsed. Jim—it really is you, Jim?"
    "Yes," he said, stupidly.
    "…" said Angie.
    He did not catch exactly what she said. Something peculiar was going on in his head, like a mental equivalent of the sort of double vision that sometimes follows a concussion. He seemed to be thinking with two minds at once. He made an effort to settle down with one set of thoughts; and succeeded in focusing in, mind-wise, after a fashion. Apparently with an effort he could keep his mind undivided.
    "I feel like somebody hit me over the head with a club," he said.
    "You do? But, really, nothing happened!" Angie was sounding distressed. "You just went down as if you'd fainted, or something like that. How are you feeling now?"
    "Sort of mixed up in the head," Jim answered.
    He had pretty well conquered the impulse to think on two tracks at once; but he was still aware of something like a separate part of his mind sitting, contained but apart, in the back of his consciousness. He made an effort to forget it. Maybe, if he ignored it, the feeling would go away. He concentrated on Angie.
    "Why is it you believe it's me, now, and you didn't before?" he demanded, sitting up on his dragon-haunches.
    "I was too upset to notice you were calling me by my name," she said. "But when you kept using yours, and then when you mentioned Grottwold, I suddenly realized it could be you, after all, and he'd thought of sending you to rescue me."
    "Thought! Hah! I told him to get you back or else! But he told me I was only supposed to project, and other people probably wouldn't even see me. Only you would."
    "What I see is one of the dragons they have here. You've projected, all right. But you've projected your identity into a dragon-body."
    "But I still don't see—Wait a minute," said Jim. "I thought earlier I must be speaking dragon. But if I'm speaking dragon, how come you can understand me? You ought to still be speaking English."
    "I don't know," said Angie. "But I could understand the other dragons, too. Maybe they all speak English."
    "They don't—I don't. Listen to what I'm saying. For that matter, listen to the sounds ">you're making."
    "But I'm speaking ordinary, colloquial—" Angie broke off, with an odd look on her face. "No, you're right. I'm not. I'm making the same sort of sounds you're making, I think. Say 'I think.' "
    "I think."
    "Yes," Angie said, thoughtfully, "it's the same sounds; only your voice is about four octaves or so deeper than mine. We must both be speaking whatever language they have here. And it's the same language for people and dragons. That's wild!"
    " 'Wild' is the word for it," said Jim. "It can't be! How would we learn a complete new language, just like that?"
    "Oh, I don't know," said Angie. "It could be, in the case of a subjective transfer, such as we both had in order to get here. Maybe the universal laws are different here and there's only one language possible, so that when you talk in this world, or wherever this is, your thoughts automatically come out in this one language."
    Jim frowned.
    "I don't understand that," he said.
    "I guess I don't either. Anyway, it doesn't matter. The main thing is, we can understand each other. What did he call you—that other dragon?"
    " 'Gorbash.' It seems that's the name of his grand-nephew, the one whose body I'm in. His name's Smrgol. Evidently he's almost two hundred years old and he's got a lot of authority with the other dragons. But never mind that. I've got to send you back; and that means I've got to hypnotize you first."
    "You made me