for an
afternoon.

An afternoon. Yet long enough for them to see him, to understand that he
was still alive. To know that somehow he had returned to life.

And then, finally, he would appear once more, after two hundred years
had passed. Two centuries later.

He would be born again, born, as a matter of fact, in a small trading
village on Mars. He would grow up, learning to hunt and trade--

A police car came on the edge of the field and stopped. The people
retreated a little. Conger raised his hands.

"I have an odd paradox for you," he said. "Those who take lives will
lose their own. Those who kill, will die. But he who gives his own life
away will live again!"

They laughed, faintly, nervously. The police were coming out, walking
toward him. He smiled. He had said everything he intended to say. It was
a good little paradox he had coined. They would puzzle over it, remember
it.

Smiling, Conger awaited a death foreordained.

THE END

Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from _If Worlds of Science Fiction_
September 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling
and typographical errors have been corrected without note.

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