"Kill you," Bodger said, and his tone rang true. "I don't want to do it that way, of course--not for reasons of pity; heaven knows you need killing, Fred--but because it's faster this way. With you dead, we'd simply elect a new President, and then _he_ could countermand your orders. That could take days, though, days of the Ultrablack you had Madge Benedict instigate in this emergency. It would be too tedious convincing the Kinsmen to Vote in the dark on a proposition they couldn't see." "I--" Stanton said blankly, "I thought you'd force Madge to turn on Light-of-Day." "We would, but Lloyd mistakenly ordered her held incommunicado," Bodger said tiredly. "He didn't know that was another of your pet phrases synonymous with death." "Good Lord!" Lloyd moaned in the darkness. "I didn't _dream_--" "Madge brought it on herself, working hand in glove with Stanton, son," Bodger said. "You did not know. The point is, only Stanton or his personal Secretary could have called off the emergency. So now we have to get tough with him." "Bodger...." Stanton straightened up, his face grim in defeat. "I have to know: If I _do_ as you ask, countermand the Goons, call off the Ultrablack--What will happen to me, afterwards?" "I can't say, Fred," Bodger replied flatly. "We'll have it put to a general Vote." "I see," said the President, knowing full well what the result of such a Vote would be, with the Hive enraged against his exposed treachery. "Is it your best offer?" "My only," said Bodger. "Let's go, Fred." He prodded Stanton's back with the Snapper, and the President began to move forward, holding his head high, toward the staircase leading to the control-chamber entrance. Frank opened the panel at the rear of the prop-Goon, and called for Andra to join him inside it, then he took Lloyd and Grace by the arms, via the controls, and guided them through the black blindness after Bodger and his prisoner. * * * * * At the head of the staircase--really no more than a tier-cut segment of the lead-concrete Sub-Level Two, over which the correspondingly undercut left wall of the twenty-five-foot-thick level could slide--Frank had to come to a halt, his prop-Goon not being equipped with extendable cogs to fit the treads and risers, as the real Goons' wheels were. "I'm going down there with him," Lloyd said, starting down into blackness. "No," his father's voice came from the level below. "I'll handle this myself, Lloyd. I can see my way and you can't." Lloyd stood undecided on the brink of the staircase, then Grace found his arm in the dark and drew him back. "I want to talk to you about your father, Lloyd," she said, when he was again at her side. "He said some strange things, up in the Unit...."