Another harsh cough from over there, putting an end to his chances of saying anything. It is like the click of a lock. He must keep the number burning inside him still.

The cough releases the tension of waiting for the van to come out. It occurs to the sentry that the van is to be destroyed. That’s why this stranger is there – and he is tense, he is young, life is dear to him, and the risks are great. When the van comes out it is to be destroyed with everything in it. He is not likely to do it when it goes in. His friends will be inside it.

Soon it will have gone its rounds for the last time. The real sentry is watching the lamp now, white with tension and horror. There it is.

The light in the lamp comes on. A shudder goes through the man against the wall and the man at the sentry-post – and this one’s fingers start playing on the switches. Quick and practised movements. The guard feels a chill creep over him.

The heavy steel door swings open, as if of its own accord, as in all houses of destruction, and immediately the van appears and the slight slithering sound can be heard.

The man on the slab behind the glass partition stands stock-still as a sentry should. But his fingers are not resting on the switches in order to close the door again. He is standing with something else in his hands. The sentry in the shadow can feel the sweat running off him.

The van glides forward through the inside corridor. Now it has come out towards the doorway, exactly where it is supposed to be – for the man behind the partition presumably intends to destroy the van and the door at the same time, that is why it is to happen right here. The moment to attack is when the door is open. Now it will happen.

The real sentry groans. Now die man behind the partition is coming to life! He jumps out with something in his hands and hurls it at the van with all his might – and while the object is in mid-air he turns and runs for his life a few paces and throws himself flat on the ground. At the same moment there is an explosion. The sentry by the wall cannot move; he seems outside the whole thing.

There is noise and flame around the van that was in the open door. A crash that shakes everything. Smoke and a deadly blast. Fragments of the van are thrown high into the air and fly in all directions. Nothing is left of it or of those who were in it. Just fragments here and there. Yet the steel door and the doorway are untouched, but stay open because no one is at the switches.

The sentry who was standing flattened against the wall has nothing more to worry about. As things are at this moment, so they must remain; the end has come. He was too close and did not throw himself down. A piece of the steel van shot through the air and has turned him into a dark stain on the wall.