Terror struck at Baker. He had reached a point where he was absolutely sure he could _not_ go on alone without Sam's supporting presence. "You tricked me!" Baker cried. "You tricked me! You didn't tell me I would have to be reborn alone!" "Doesn't every man?" said Sam. "Is there any way to be born, except alone?" Slowly, the world closed in about Baker. Light. Sounds. Wet. Cold. The impact of a million idiot minds. The coursing of cosmic-ray particles. The wrenching of Earth's magnetic and gravitational fields. Old and sluggish memories were renewed, memories meant to be buried for all of his life. Baker felt as if he were suddenly running down a dark and immense corridor. Behind were all the terrors spawned since the beginning of time. Ahead were a thousand openings of light and safety. He raced for the nearest and brightest and most familiar. "No," said Sam Atkins. "You cannot go that way again. It is the way you went before--and it led to this--to a search for death. For you, it will lead only to the same goal again." "I can't go on!" Baker cried. The terrors seemed to be swiftly closing in. "Take my hand a moment longer," said Sam. "Inspect these more distant paths. There are many of them that will be agreeable to you." Baker felt calmer now in the renewed presence of Sam Atkins. He passed the branching pathway that Sam had forbidden, that had seemed so bright. He sensed now why Sam had cautioned him against it. Far down, in the depths of it, he glimpsed faintly a dark ugliness that he had not seen before. He shuddered. Directly ahead there seemed to be the opening of a corridor of blazing brightness. Baker's calmness increased as he approached. "This one," he said. He heard nothing, but he sensed Sam Atkins' smile, and nod of approval. He remembered now for the first time why he had wanted to die. It was to avoid the very terrors by which he had been pursued through the dark corridor. All this had happened before, and he had gone down the pathway Sam had forbidden. Somehow, like a circle, it had come back to this very point, to this forgotten experience for which he had been willing to die rather than endure again. It was very bewildering. He did not understand the meaning of it. But he knew he had corrected a former error. He was back in the world. He was alive again. Sam Atkins looked up at his companions through eyes that seemed all but dead. "He's going to make it," he said. "We can get the car out and pick up Baker now." * * * * * They used Sam's panel truck, which had a four-wheel drive and mud tires. Nothing else could possibly get through. Fenwick left his own car at Ellerbee's.