"Because I have experienced everything," said the sleeper. "I have gone back to the first of the beginning. I have been into the future where it merges with the beginning I found in the past. I have floated through space that seemed limitless, but I found that it only eventually became the beginning I found in the past. Well, in all the dimensions, in all the spaces and times and imaginative worlds, I found only one path--it led back to the beginning. But I have had the foresight to save one world for the last." Amco was aware of an emptiness creeping through his heart. "But what could remain, sleeper?" he murmured. The sleeper continued: "My experience is completely inconceivable to you. The splendor of traveling as light does, effacing space, bending as it bends, repeating itself into endless prisms of existence. The swirling of the electron, or the frantic swimming through the plasma of monsters. I have lived and relived all the complexities of all the combinations. But I've anticipated the ultimate. I've prepared for it. I saved what might prove to be the final eternal moment for the last." The sleeper closed his eyes and relaxed. His lips moved slightly. "You know what to do, Robot." Amco backed away. He swallowed hard, and brushed his eyes. He turned toward the teleo-electronic man-- "Odd," it radiated, "that oblivion, or death, or whatever symbol is used to describe the Unknown, should be the final and most desirable world of all worlds." Amco looked dazedly about, still backing away from the inert sleeper. "Yes. Yes, odd. Very odd. You will let me go now, let me return to my own time. I don't desire the fate of this sleeper, and I'm sure you don't. Let me return." The teleo-electronic man nodded. "It does seem futile now. You can return." Amco did not answer. He was running, running frantically away from the future. At least he had found the true, ultimate goal. Oblivion. Now he could inform the Coordinator of that fact. He would be the instrument through which all this impossible flow termed life would be terminated--at least for Earth and for his own particular species of rational life. Why evolve a few million years more only to decide that oblivion was preferable? One could find that immediately. The sleeper, through the robot, had brought about his own death because he had learned the ultimate truth. * * * * * "Of course, you can't remember, Amco," the Coordinator said. "We foresaw that. It's one of the paradoxes of time travel. But now comprehending its principle, I anticipated illogical results in its effects. I thought, or rather hoped, you would remember." Amco shrugged. "There is some kind of vague, indistinct memory in my mind. I'm convinced of that. But--I can't grasp it. Wherever my discoveries are, they are important to us. They would have answered our problem and given us a definite course of action."