The room rocked. The floor came up suddenly, jarringly, and the ceiling came down. The guard stood there, a look of horror on his face. Not fear of death, Rhodes found himself thinking in the final few seconds. The Kedaki, believing in metempsychosis, did not fear death. But the choking, blinding fear of any man a split-second before personal catastrophe. Then, literally, the ceiling fell. The guard pivoted slowly, as if he had all the time in the world to return to the door. He took one small step and the ceiling hit him. It came down not in one sheet but sectionally, Rhodes found himself thinking with amazing objectivity, because--see?--the guard is being struck now, but I haven't been touched.... The guard fell, and the ceiling crumpled on top of him. Rhodes saw the guard's head, very close to the floor, bent at right angles to his body, which was stretched out and hidden by the shards of plaster and stone. There was a worm of blood trickling from the guard's nose. His eyes were opened wide, but the eyeballs had rolled up in the sockets. The interrogator screamed, and Rhodes heard the sound faintly above the thunderous booming before the tons of plaster and stone came down on both of them. CHAPTER II He stood up. I'm dead, he thought. How can I be standing, if I'm dead? It was dim, but not completely dark. He breathed deeply, and gagged on plaster dust. He heard a siren distantly, and the brisk, businesslike sound of flames crackling nearby. A pile of masonry covered the broken, battered desk. Automatically, he groped behind it. There was someone there. They had been talking, he remembered. He found the man, a Kedaki. Am I a Kedaki? he thought. He did not know. He remembered nothing about himself. Shock, he thought reasonably enough. You've been through hell, so just calm down and it will all come back to you. The man behind the desk was dead, his skull flattened on top and pulpy. The man nearer to the door was also dead, his neck broken. He went around the corpse and to the door, which opened into the room. He opened it, was driven back by a wall of flame. He slammed the door, but not before his eyebrows were seared. He went quickly to the center of the room and smelled something like feathers burning before he felt the pain. Then, instinctively, he beat his hands against his head. His hair had caught fire. He shouted with pain and looked up and saw the smoke and the fluctuating brightness of the flame and by the time he got it out he knew all his hair was gone. He felt his scalp gingerly. It smarted, but there didn't seem to be any blisters. Third degree burn--he was lucky. Only for the moment, he realized. Because the fire was still out there and while the door seemed flame resistant, it wouldn't resist forever. He had to find some other way out of here if he didn't want to perish in the flames.