“Mystics?”

“So I’m told....  Still farther north there’s Lichstorm.”

“Now we’re going far afield.”

“There are mountains there—­and altogether it must be a very dangerous place, especially for a full-blooded man like you.  Take care of yourself.”

“This is rather premature, Polecrab.  How do you know I’m going there?”

“As you’ve come from the south, I suppose you’ll go north.”

“Well, that’s right enough,” said Maskull, staring hard at him.  “But how do you know I’ve come from the south?”

“Well, then, perhaps you haven’t—­but there’s a look of Ifdawn about you.”

“What kind of look?”

“A tragical look,” said Polecrab.  He never even glanced at Maskull, but was gazing at a fixed spot on the water with unblinking eyes.

“What lies beyond Lichstorm?” asked Maskull, after a minute or two.

“Barey, where you have two suns instead of one—­but beyond that fact I know nothing about it....  Then comes the ocean.”

“And what’s on the other side of the ocean?”

“That you must find out for yourself, for I doubt if anybody has ever crossed it and come back.”

Maskull was silent for a little while.

“How is it that your people are so unadventurous?  I seem to be the only one travelling from curiosity.”

“What do you mean by ’your people’?”

“True—­you don’t know that I don’t belong to your planet at all.  I’ve come from another world, Polecrab.”

“What to find?”

“I came here with Krag and Nightspore—­to follow Surtur.  I must have fainted the moment I arrived.  When I sat up, it was night and the others had—­vanished.  Since then I’ve been travelling at random.”

Polecrab scratched his nose.  “You haven’t found Surtur yet?”

“I’ve heard his drum taps frequently.  In the forest this morning I came quite close to him.  Then two days ago, in the Lusion Plain, I saw a vision—­a being in man’s shape, who called himself Surtur.”

“Well, maybe it was Surtur.”

“No, that’s impossible,” replied Maskull reflectively.  “It was Crystalman.  And it isn’t a question of my suspecting it—­I know it.”

“How?”

“Because this is Crystalman’s world, and Surtur’s world is something quite different.”

“That’s queer, then,” said Polecrab.

“Since I’ve come out of that forest,” proceeded Maskull, talking half to himself, “a change has come over me, and I see things differently.  Everything here looks much more solid and real in my eyes than in other places so much so that I can’t entertain the least doubt of its existence.  It not only looks real, it is real—­and on that I would stake my life....  But at the same time that it’s real, it is false.”

“Like a dream?”