Page:Weird Tales volume 36 number 02.djvu/26

 acting queerly, she thought anxiously, ever since he had awakened that morning.

He had been pale and stricken and haggard since he had awakened. He had not gone to the office at all, a tiling unprecedented. And he had spent most of the day pacing to and fro in the little house, his haunted eyes not seeming to see her, his whole bearing one of intense excitement.

Henry was afraid—afraid of the dread climax to which things were rushing in the other world of Thar. He knew the awful peril in which Jotan now stood. Once those hordes of Bunts got over the wall, the city was doomed.

"I've got to quit driving myself crazy about it," he told himself desperately that afternoon. "It's just a dream—Thar and Khal Kan must be only a dream."

But his feverish apprehension was not lessened by that thought. No matter if Thar was only a dream, it was real to him!

E KNEW Jotan and its people, from the nightly dreams of his earliest childhood. Every street of the black city he had known and loved, as Khal Kan. Even if it were only a dream, he couldn't let the old, lovely city and its people be overwhelmed by Egir and his green barbarians.

If Thar was the dream, and the city Jotan was taken and Khal Kan was slain—there would be an end to his precious dream-life, forever. Only the monotonous existence of Henry Stevens would stretch before him.

And if Thar happened to be the reality, then it was doubly vital that Khal Kan's people be saved from that menace.

"Yet what can I do?" Henry groaned inwardly. "What can Khal Kan do? The Bunts will surely break into the city—"

The poisoned arrows, new to the Jotanians, gave Egir's green warriors a terrific advantage. That, and their outnumbering hordes, would enable them to scale the walls of Jotan and then the end would be at hand.

"Damn Egir for his deviltry in using those arrows!" Henry muttered. "I wish I could take a dozen machine-guns across. I'd show the cursed traitor."

It was a vain and idle wish, he knew. Nothing material could traverse the gulf between dream-world and real world, whichever was which. His own body, even—Henry Stevens' body—never crossed that gulf. AH he took into Thar each night were his memories of Henry Stevens' life on Earth during the day, and that seemed only a dream.

He could take memory across, though. And that thought gave pause to Henry. A faint gleam of hope appeared on his horizon. As Khal Kan, he would remember everything that he did or learned now, as Henry Stevens. Suppose that he—

"By Heaven!" Henry exclaimed excitedly. "There's a chance I could do it! A trick to overmatch Egir's poisoned arrows!"

His wife watched him puzzledly as he pored excitedly over certain volumes of their encyclopedia. She saw him hastily jot down notes, and then for a long time that evening he sat, moving his lips, apparently memorizing.

Henry was vibrant with excitement and hope. He, Henry Stevens of Earth, might be able to save Khal Kan's city for him!

"If Khal Kan will only do it!" he thought prayerfully. "If he won't just ignore it as dream—"

Waiting tensely for sleep that night, Henry repeated over and over to himself the simple formula he had gleaned from the encyclopedia.

"Khal Kan must try it!" he told himself desperately.

Sleep came slowly to him. And as he fell asleep, he knew that in his dream he would wake to what might be the last day of Jotan's existence....