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Gordon re-orients himself to the mundane present-day Earth (New York), but a strange woman soon shows up and reveals that she's Lianna who voluntarily transferred to a coma victim. Happy ending.
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He stumbled to the window and looked out on the starlit buildings and blinking lights of New York. How small, cramped, ancient, the city looked now, when his mind was still full of the mighty splendors of Throon!
Tears blurred his eyes as he looked up at the starry sky. Orion Nebula was but a misty star pendant from that constellation-giant's belt. Ursa Minor reared toward the pole. Low above the roof tops blinked the white eye of Deneb.
He could not even see Canopus, down below the horizon. But his thoughts flashed out to it, across the abysses of space and time to the fairy towers of Throon.
"Lianna! Lianna! he whispered, tears running down his face.
. . .
And then on an evening two weeks after his return as he sat sick with heartache in his rooms, there came a knock on his door.
Gordon was surprised when he found outside it a girl he had never seen before, a pale, dark-haired lovely girl who looked at him with strange shyness.
. . .
Then his voice trailed off as he stared frozenly into the girl's pale, beautiful face.
Somehow it was as though that face had become transparent, as though through its featues and through the dark eyes he saw another face, other eyes, another girl.
It was mad, it was insane. But not for his life could Gordon repress the hoarse cry that broke from his lips as he held out his hands toward the girl.
"Lianna!"
She stumbled forward, her arms went around his neck, her head was buried against his cheek and she sobbed.
"John Gordon! You recognized me, even in this body! I knew you would!"
. . .
He had sought adventure but he had found far more. Across two hundred thousand years he had found and won a bride, a daughter of distant suns, a princess of the star-kingdoms yet to be.
- The End -
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