"People out of your past life?"
"Yes." Again he did not elaborate.
"So did I." Thorvald's expression was bleak; his encounters in the fog must have proved no more pleasant than Shann's. "That suggests that we do trigger the hallucinations ourselves. But maybe we can really lick it now."
"How?"
"Well, if these phantoms are born of our memories there are about only two or three we could see together—maybe a Throg on the rampage, or that hound we left back in the mountains. And if we do sight anything like that, we'll know what it is. On the other hand, if we stick together and one of us sees something that the other can't ... well, that fact alone will explode the ghost."
There was sense in what he said. Shann aided the officer to his feet.
"I must be a better subject for their experiments than you," the older man remarked ruefully. "They took me over completely at the first."
"You were carrying that disk," Shann pointed out. "Maybe that acted as a focusing lens for whatever power they use to make us play trained animals."
"Could be!" Thorvald brought out the cloth-wrapped bone coin. "I still have it." But he made no move to pull off the bit of rag about it. "Now"—he gazed at the wall of green—"which way?"
Shann shrugged. Long ago he had lost any idea of keeping a straight course through the murk. He might have turned around any number of times since he first walked blindly into this place. Then he pointed to the packet Thorvald held.