His own face.

He stumbled against a door and found himself in a hall. Terror seized him and he began running blindly. Silently his bare feet carried him along carpeted corridors, endless and deserted, up noiseless flights of steps that never seemed to end. He blundered wildly around a corner and found himself caught in an alcove, a full-length mirror ahead of him, blocking his way.

A wavering figure hovered within the mirror. He gazed mutely at it, at the waxen hair, the vapid mouth and lips, the colourless eyes. Arms limp and boneless at its sides; a spineless, bleached thing that blinked vacantly back at him, without sound or motion.

He screamed—and the image winked out. He plunged on along the corridors, feet barely skimming the carpets. He felt nothing under him. He was rising, carried upward by his great terror, a screaming, streaking thing that hurtled towards the high-domed roof above.

Arms out, he shot soundlessly through walls and panels, in and out of empty rooms, down deserted passages, a blinded, terrorized thing that flashed and wheeled in desperate efforts to escape.

With a crash he struck against a brick fireplace and fluttered down to the soft carpet. For a moment he lay bewildered, and then he was stumbling on, hurrying frantically, hands in front of his face.

Sounds ahead, and a glowing yellow light that filtered through a half-opened doorway. In a room a handful of men were sitting at a table covered with tapes and reports. An atronic bulb burned in the centre, a warm, unwavering miniature sun that pulled him hypnotically. Coffee cups, writers, men murmuring and poring over their work. One huge heavy-set man with massive, sloping shoulders.

"Verrick!" he shouted at the man. "Verrick, help me."

Reese Verrick glanced up angrily. "What do you want? I'm busy."