Someone entered the room. It was the Indian reporting that the soldiers had penetrated into the crater. "Watch this man," Chetzisky commanded. "Shoot him if necessary." He left the room. I heard the cabin door shut and its sound echoed like a sentence of doom. In the long strained silence that followed I thought frantically. Then the silence was broken. The cabin door opened again, dragging footsteps approached the room. Eyes bloodshot, one hand holding his head in evident pain, the Indian I had beat down with the butt of the .45 appeared in the doorway. He glared at me in sudden recognition and with the roar of an enraged bull lunged at me. The other Indian tried to hold him back. That one moment was my opportunity; I picked up one of the home-made chairs and crashed it down on their heads. While they stumbled about groggily, I dashed out of the cabin after Chetzisky. He was standing at the head of the ramp, working what appeared to be a lever. He heard me coming and fired his rifle at me twice. He missed my zigzagging figure. He acted quickly now, releasing the lever, and turning round, braced himself to meet my charge. We fell to the ground, Chetzisky clinging to me savagely, rolling me over and over until I realized what his game was, to move farther and farther from the ramp. I twisted my head and looked back. My blood went cold. The drum was no longer at the top of the incline. It was half-way down and moving faster. I shook Chetzisky off and started for the ramp, but he threw out his foot and tripped me. Sprawled out on the ground I looked up to see the drum swiftly moving towards the trigger mechanism that would catapult it into the head of the vein. I couldn't stop it now; time had run out on the world. And in that black moment when the earth trembled on the rim of nothingness, the conditioned reflexes that I had acquired in four years of football asserted themselves. I was on my feet rushing madly and then I was sailing through the air. The breath was knocked out of me as I landed on the ramp. Something hard struck my side and kept crushing me. At first I felt nothing. Suddenly a cold sweat broke out all over me. Chetzisky was beside me now, screaming at me and pulling me. "You'll kill yourself," he kept shrieking. I fought him off. I couldn't let him pull me off the ramp. Only my body stood between the earth and its annihilation. "Don't be a fool; let me help you," he pleaded. He was a transformed being now; no longer the mad-man destroying a planet but a man trying to save the life of another human being. It was too late for such sentiment now. I didn't want to be saved. He came at me again. I got one arm loose and pushed a fist at him. He went reeling backwards. He changed his tactics and started to pull me by the feet. I couldn't get at him. My body started to move. I clutched fiercely to one of the ramp rails.