anything," Gamoll said. "But the Underground's only hope seems to be my keeping clear."  

Slowly, almost unobtrusively, a vision rose up before Buckmaster's eyes. Gamoll's features clouded, became vague, and were gone. In his place stood the General. In the General's hand was a bottle, and before him a wooden frame, holding a metal box with its lid open. Buckmaster realized that what he was seeing was happening in some other part of the building. He could see cement walls in the room in which the General stood. Probably the basement, he thought.  

Within him the Force commanded! He must get to the General, and kill him. The world was on the brink of disaster. And time was running out.  

Gradually the whole composite vision vanished and he saw the handsome features of Gamoll again. He knew what he had to do now.  

"I'm leaving immediately," he said.  

Closing the library door behind him he walked unhesitatingly down a long hallway. To either side of him, painted on the walls, were murals, depicting peasants in the fields, harvesting grain. Idly he observed the painted figures as he walked, with his brain chilled and numbed of almost all emotion. The painted figures possessed as much reality as anything else about him, he thought disinterestedly.  

He walked down steps and across an inner courtyard, his legs moving stiffly, lifelessly. He continued up the steps on the far side of the courtyard, his mind shutting out everything around him except the door ahead. When he reached there he stopped. Here, he knew, he was at the crossroads. He could move straight ahead through the door, or he could walk around the house and enter the basement through the back. That was the longer way, but probably the safer. And the Force urged the second choice.  

A mood of black frustration swept over him and some perverse stubbornness of his human nature rebelled at this supine abnegation. He knew that he was going to die, and his one last defiant act would be to die in a way of his own choosing. He walked straight ahead.  

As he opened the door and stepped into a long green-carpeted room he found himself facing three guards. They held guns and the guns were all aimed at him.  

Even before he observed that the guards were firing, he felt the killing slugs enter his body. He knew the bullets had reached vital organs and that he was about to die. Within him 

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