on. He
hurled his rage at nothing and no one.

Suddenly a huge black hexagon was before him.

Fear.

His mind began to signal reverse thrust, and only a supreme effort of
will overrode it. The blackness he headed toward..... Why did it
terrify him so? It was as Fear itself. And suddenly the looming shaft
above him appeared not as a barrier, but as the strand of a protective
net which covered a great abyss, a hole in living Space. And he was
falling through.

"No!" He could not turn back now! This was why he had come. He would
destroy them. Somehow! This had to be the key. But they no longer
seemed an enemy and this silent, screaming void was no friend. Was it
yet too late.....

"NO!" He was inside.

*

It was cold in that place, through the ship and through the celluloid,
and the last thing he saw as he looked back through the monitor was a
tightening circle of black, like a swirl of inky cloud, enveloping the
Guardians' web.

Then all was dark, but for a sickly and sporadic flashing of the
console. He felt a kind of dull dread, a physical weakness, but not
yet fear. He had pierced all barriers, and stood at the heart of the
nightmare.

Only he could not remember why he had come. No, he remembered. But it
did not seem like much of a reason. "Guardians!" His rage would not
fire in that place, and the screaming hurt his throat. As the silence
hurt his ears.

The ship's momentum had begun to deteriorate, as if such principles did
not apply here. This did not startle him. It seemed almost doubly
familiar. But then the outer hull began to deteriorate as well---he
could feel it. "It isn't possible." The shields were down, this he
knew, but the vessel's outer skin was of pure platinated osmodidium,
seven times descended from stainless steel. It resisted heat,
friction, impact and atmosphere. But in that cold wet nothing it
tinged and flaked as if with rust, was pocked and threw out buds like a
face torn by a shotgun. It broke down, came apart, and fell away all
around him, leaving him naked and without a ship.

He stood alone in the black without protection. The celluloid and
wires were all that remained---why he couldn't say. For a time his
body was suspended, and his feet danced like those of a marionette
trying to find the stage. Then they touched bottom on something very
hard and smooth. A wide stair. He began to feel suffocated, knew
there was no oxygen but this wasn'