"That's right, that's it," Doc Candle said. "Take it and die with it. That's the ticket." Collins' eyes settled on a gauge. Three quarters lightspeed. Climbing. Nothing strange, nothing untoward happened when you reached lightspeed. It was only an arbitrary number. All else was superstition. Forget it, forget it, forget it. _Something_ was telling him that. At first he thought it was Doc Candle but then he knew it was the ship. Collins sat back and took it, and what he was taking was death. It was creeping over him, seeping into his feet, filling him like liquid does a sponge. Not will, but curiosity, caused him to turn his head. He saw Doc Candle. The old body was dying. He was in the emergency seat, broken, a ribbon of blood lacing his chin. But Doc Candle continued to laugh triumphantly in Collins' head. "Why? Why do you have to kill me?" Collins asked. "Because I am evil." "How do you know you're evil?" "_They told me so!_" Candle shouted back in the thundering silence of Death's approach. "They were always saying I was bad." _They._ * * * * * Collins got a picture of something incredibly old and incredibly wise, but long unused to the young, clumsy gods. Something that could mar the molding of a godling and make it mortal. "But I'm not really so very bad," Doc Candle went on. "I had to destroy, but I picked someone who really didn't care if he were destroyed or not. An almost absolutely passive human being, Sam. You." Collins nodded. "And even then," said the superhuman alien from outer space, "I could not just destroy. I have created a work of art." "Work of art?" "Yes. I have taken your life and turned it into a horror story, Sam! A chilling, demonic, black-hearted horror!" Collins nodded again. _LIGHTSPEED._ There was finally something human within Sam Collins that he could not deny. He wanted to live. It wasn't true. He did care what happened. You do? said somebody. He does? asked somebody else, surprised, and suddenly he again got the image of wiser, older creatures, a little ashamed because of what they had done to the creature named Doc Candle. He does, chorused several voices, and Sam Collins cried aloud: "I do! I want to live!" They were just touching lightspeed; he felt it. This time it was not just a biological response. He really wanted help. He wanted to stay alive. From the older, wiser voices he got help, though he never knew how; he felt the ship move slipwise under him, and then a crash. And Doc Candle got help too, the only help even the older, wiser ones could give him. * * * * * They pulled him out of the combined wreckage of the spaceship and his house. Both were demolished. It was strange how the spaceship Sam Collins was on crashed right into his house. Ed Michaels recalled a time in a tornado when Sy Baxter's car was picked up, lifted across town and dropped into his living room.