Desensitized, he felt nothing except the bitter black gall of possible failure. His shattered leg wouldn’t function. He hitched himself around, and as he did so a wheelchair came out of a door to the right of the blazing fireplace. Martin was covered with an Indian blanket. He was a huge mound of unrecognizable suet. No one could have remembered at that moment that the figure had ever been Martin. Hall heard a frightful voice, a grotesque wheezing sigh of babyish irritation. But nothing moved behind the sound except the pink rosebud lips, and even they moved with a heavy torpor. “Richard ... who is it? What is happening here?” The puffed marshmallow face, the eyes like those of a grazing animal faded as Hall twisted on around, moving the circuit gun. The voice, the image of Martin, had all filled up no more than a second’s space of time. So _it_ was called Richard now! It was moving along the wall as though in some strange fashion it had moved out of the wall itself. Immaculate, lean and trim in a black suit, with its white face destitute of any emotion that Hall could see. Yet how odd that that face had been so effective in reflecting the deepest, most despairing needs of human beings. It was an evil kind of mirror. It fired again. Hall slid forward, feeling his body throb. He saw the hole appear in his coat sleeve. His fingers spread out uselessly and the circuit gun slipped away from him.... Hall felt the leg of the heavy table against his other hand. Richard smiled down and aimed the revolver relentlessly at Hall’s head. Only it wasn’t really a smile at all. “So you’re not a man,” _it_ said. “No,” Hall replied, in a defiant whisper. “You’ve done a good job of concealing the fact.” Hall didn’t move. “I threw up a different oscillation, so you would think I was human,” he said. “It made you just careless enough to make the difference. You and the others.” “What difference? You die. You’re not like the rest of us, though.” “Not exactly,” Hall said. “I was number one thousand, only my motivations were different. I was made for only one purpose--to kill you.” “Then they didn’t do such a good job with you. You must realize that I’m going to kill you.” “You won’t kill me,” Hall affirmed quietly. He moved like an explosion. The table crushed the middle of No. 999 into the wall. Hall fired a full charge from the circuit gun into its neck and--into the vital thermostat. The face of No. 999 became a melting lopsided mask. One of its eyes fell out, and twisted on a wiry strand in the lamplight like a pendant. No. 999--Richard--was dead. The end of the road. No human could have done it. A human had needs that were stronger than his ability to resist a Servitor, even for a minute. And the limitation had included Schor, Donna, every human victim. A human was too vulnerable. But now No. 999 lay on the floor, a pile of synthetic clay. It too had become vulnerable. Hall heard a scream....