tesque fantasies out of fragments of broken memory.

The routine of the unceasing bells went on. Bells, leap up. Bells,
calisthenics. Bells, eat. Bells, march. Bells, work. He tried to shut
out the bells. He tried to talk to 4901. 4901 covered up his ears and
wouldn't listen. The girl wouldn't listen to him.

There were other ways. And he kept the poison hidden in the capsule in
his hollow tooth. He had been counting the steps covering the length of
the hall, then the twenty steps to the left, then to the right to where
the narrow corridor led again to the left where he had seen the
air-lock.

After the bells stopped ringing and the darkness was all around him, he
got up. He counted off the steps. No guards, no alarms, nothing to stop
him. They depended on the conditioners to take care of everything. This
time he would do it. This time they wouldn't bring him back.

No one else could even talk with him about it, even though he knew they
all wanted to escape. Some part of them still wanted to, but they
couldn't. So it was up to him. He stopped against the smooth, opaque,
up-curving glasite dome. It had a brittle bright shine that reflected
from the Moon's surface. It was night out there, with an odd metallic
reflection of Earthlight against the naked crags.

He hesitated. He could feel the intense and terrible cold, the
airlessness out there fingering hungrily, reaching and whispering and
waiting.

He turned the wheel. The door opened. He entered the air-lock and shut
the first door when the air-pressure was right. He turned the other
wheel and the outer lock door swung outward. The out-rushing air spun
him outward like a balloon into the awful airless cold and naked
silence.

His body sank down into the thick pumice dust that drifted up around him
in a fine powdery blanket of concealment. He felt no pain. The cold
airlessness dissolved around him in deepening darkening pleasantness.
This time he was dead, thoroughly and finally and gloriously dead, even
buried, and they couldn't find him. And even if they did finally find
him, what good would it do them?

Some transcendental part of him seemed to remain to observe and triumph
over his victory. This time he was dead to stay.

* * * * *

This time he knew at once that the twisting body in the steaming pain,
the distorted face, the screams rising and rising were all Charles
Marquis.

Maybe a dream though, he thought. So much pai