Then the guard straightened his shoulders, and he half smiled. Immediately he was very serious again; and then he spoke.
“Put down that gun,” he said, calmly, evenly.
The upper lip of 9009 raised like a theatre-curtain and showed his teeth. It remained raised.
“Drop that gun,” said Jennings again, his voice like furbished steel; and a film came over his eyes.
But 9009 was not listening; he was absorbed in another problem. He was trying to decide how he would kill Jennings. His first impulse had been to shoot him through the heart. Then he had wanted to put out with bullets the white-gray eyes. Then he had almost made up his mind to shoot him low in the body, so that he would die slowly and in great pain. But as he stood there, frigid, gun in hand, a profound dissatisfaction of these methods had filled his being. Somehow, none fitted; they were discordant, all of them, with a dream he had dreamed.
