vapor, without leaving any
traces of how he died. That was murder, but if a god couldn't get away
with murder, what sort of god was he? A pretty poor, cheap sort indeed.
Yes, he could make his own rules.

And he could go on, maintaining his godhood by little murders of that
sort, and other deadly miracles, until they hated him more than they
loved him. That would follow inevitably. And then, when they all hated
him, not even his gun would save him. Then--

"You're a liar," he told himself fiercely. "That isn't the thing you're
afraid of. Your weakness is that you don't have a murderous nature. You
could kill one or two of them and get away with it, and you'd be able to
control yourself and kill no more. That time you hit the man over the
head, you didn't intend to kill him either. You were more frightened, at
first, anyway, by the thought that you might have killed him, than by
the danger of being caught. You were overjoyed when he lived.

"You hate to kill, that's your trouble. You've had a sense of
responsibility all along, but it never had a chance to develop. Now it's
developed. You feel responsible for these people, for Aoooya and for the
rest of them. That's why you can't take advantage of them. You've been
posing as a rebel all your life, and you're just a respectable,
law-abiding citizen at heart."

He winced at the thought. His own society had never accepted him at his
own valuation. This one took him for a much greater being than he took
himself, and there seemed to be nothing to do but to live up to what he
was expected to be.

* * * * *

All the same, Aoooya continued to be a tempting morsel, and sooner or
later, he feared, he would not be able to resist her. And then the
planet itself provided a diversion.

They had never seen such a thing and had no idea of what it presaged,
but he knew. He had heard of it on Earth and on Venus, and he had seen
it on other planets where the rock formations had not yet settled down.
A little hollow appeared first in the ground, and then the hollow was
pushed out and suddenly blown into the air. Steam whistled through the
newly made vent, a shower of steam and hot dust and red hot fragments of
rock. Slowly the vent grew, until the cloud from the terrifying geyser
darkened the sky and spread panic through the tribe.

He knew what would happen next. They were running around in terror, but
not for one moment was he himself in doubt. He do