'Listen to me, remnant of battle companies. They were fully in the grip of the system's gravity and no longer capable of inertialess locomotion. Dreary violet patterns on the motive display made plain that it had been the final effort of the Ship that brought them to this haven. Thagdal turned to the small woman at the directive console. It was a blue world with white clouds and snowy mountains and landmasses of ochre and red and gray-green-beyond doubt a world of compatible life. The sunlit surface of the planet seemed to roll open beneath them at their approach. Then the Ship's ominous momentum carried them on the chromosphere and the orange flames of the sun's limb burst forth, followed by its dazzling yellow substance. For long moments, as the stunned travelers watched without knowing what they saw, the halo of pink atmosphere and the pearly wings of the eclipsed sun's corona gave an aureole to the black world. The Ship had emerged in the shadow cone of a planet.

They hung in normal space, stars all around them. The Ship and the people felt their anguish dim into a mere harmony of nearly musical vibrations that echoed, damped, and finally snapped off. Sharing the agony of the passengers, it pushed and pried against the tough fabric of the superficies until there were flickers of black against the gray. That and pain.īut the Ship was doing its best. The pain of the usually swift translation was prolonged as well, until the thousand, for all their strength, cursed and wept within their minds and became convinced that they would be trapped. TO CONFIRM that it was indeed near death, the great vessel broke through into normal space with lingering slowness. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication DataĪnd the terrors of death are fallen upon me.Īnd I said: O that I had wings like a dove!įor then I would fly away and be at rest. Permission in writing from the publisher. Mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or byĪny information storage or retrieval system, without Or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or Map of Northwestern Europe During Pliocene EpochĪll rights reserved.

The many colored land