And so his vast paranormal powers were meaningless, because the physical universe itself was without meaning. Ordered, yes. Finely structured. But with no more meaning than an alarm clock. He could be God, and yet the only safety and sanity he had felt was when Fran drew him back from the brink of the bewildering nothingness into the shelter of her breast. But for all his control of _things_, he had been unable to achieve that blending that meant power. He had only a meaningless power over things which now, in essence, were only nothingness in various rates of flow.... The sun had set and he had turned none of the lights on. The gloom of dusk settled, blanketing his body with darkness and his mind with despair. If Fran--If. A meaningless word now. If Fran had only accepted him--if he could control his own emotions as easily as the magic-show flames he had donned! But he had feared to surrender himself to any emotion, he had given too little of himself to Fran--and when the moment of his need came, she had nothing of him that could call him back safe from the borderland of bleak despair. He wasn't fit. Like a baby given a straight razor, he could not cope with his gift, and the outcome was inevitable. There was only one answer. Best do it now. * * * * * Suddenly the darkness was pierced by flames, a flickering, growing fire which enveloped and covered his body. His clothes vanished in a flare of flame, spreading to and attacking the soft upholstery of the chair. A small thing to salvage, his ego. But this was the grandiose way, the _big_ way--for the big failure. He sat for long moments, crowned in golden flames, lost in contemplation of the streams of superheated glowing ions radiated from the burning carbon. Then the chair shifted as cloth burned through, fibre straps released their hold on the metal springs of the seat. Time. Deliberately, without emotion, he released his hold on the lines of force which demarcated the limits of his body. His hair vanished instantly in a shower of sparks and simultaneously a furnace blast beat in on him. Then his skin was blistering and blackening; gone. He collapsed into his funeral pyre, flinging out limbs in reflex spasm and struggle, and he was.... He lived. He was aware. He was everything in his world and still nothing; streams of force, patterns of sub-atomic flux. He was a moment when all fear and all perception had vanished, blending into a gestalt that was more than himself.... In her uneasy sleep, Francine floated five inches above the surface of her bed. THE END