"Is all well with you, Asha?" Nelson heard a thought-voice ask.
"All is well — and I am glad to have awaked from my sleep!" He heard the eager answering thought. That was strange. The question had been answered by Asha, yet he was Asha the wolf-at least he dwelt in the wolfs body.
Or did he?
Nelson suddenly realized that half his sense-perceptions were gone, that he could no longer scent anything at all. His body felt different. Not the tight, compact wolf-body to which he'd grown accustomed, but a long, gangling, awkward body—
Nelson, with an inarticulate cry, wrenched his eyelids open. But he knew what he would see before he looked down at himself. His hoarse wordless cry had been no wolf's howl but a human cry.
He looked down at the length of his own body again, sprawling in its dusty khaki uniform on a padded cot, still wearing its thought-crown. He moved arms and legs and they responded.
"I'm back," he whispered thickly.
"Yes," said a breathless voice. "You are back, Eric Nelson!"
He knew it for Nsharra's voice and he turned to look for her and looked full into the face of Asha the wolf. They lay side by side on two narrow cots — the wolf whose mind had slept so that a man could occupy his body — and the man.
Asha's body was dusty now, his hair matted with dried blood from wounds, his feet sore and bleeding. But his bright green eyes looked intelligently into Nelson's face. Nelson turned and looked up. Kree stood behind the cots, beside the big platinum mind-transference machine of the ancients.