 What central theme of the story is revealed in the conclusion?
A gun is an interesting weapon; it can be hired, of course, and naturally doesn't care who hires it. Something much the same can be said of the gunman, too.... The pleasurable, comfortable, warm feeling began spreading over him, the way it always did. The evening was dark, it was unlikely that the other even saw the circle of steel that was the mouth of the shotgun barrel, now resting on the car's window ledge. And at that moment, the universe caved inward upon Joseph Marie Prantera. There was a falling through all space and through all time. And he came out of it as quickly and completely as he'd gone in. A door slid open in the wall in a way that Joe had never seen a door operate before. The other spoke precisely and slowly, the way a highly educated man speaks a language which he reads and writes fluently but has little occasion to practice vocally. It opened on his approach, the door sliding back into the wall in much the same manner as the room's door had opened for Reston-Farrell. He looked out, however, not on the lawns and walks of a sanitarium but upon a wide boulevard of what was obviously a populous city. He wondered, all over again, if this was some kind of pressure cooker. The maternal linage was almost universally ignored." Whatever the something else was, a slot opened in the middle of the table and a glass, so clear of texture as to be all but invisible, was elevated.
 If someone is willing to take a life, you cannot trust them to make moral decisions
 The more good you do for others, the more opportunity for them to criticize you  If someone is willing to take a life, you cannot trust them to make moral decisions  When cornered, threatened creatures will do anything to survive  The prosperity of a nation is more important than any individual life