well then – a painting or a piece of statuary is a thing outside the human life, your life. it is an emotional experience only. it has actually nothing to do with you yourself. you could live very well the rest of your life if you never saw it again, although you would remember it every now and then the ache would come again at the memory of it. but imagine a form of life, a culture, a way of life, a way you yourself could live, so beautiful that it made you ache just like the painting, but a thousandfold more so...

... looking directly at the the cloud, he saw that it was not a cloud, although what it was he did not know. it was a massive wall of utter blackness that rose from where it met the surface of the downward sloping sand far into the sky, so that he was forced to crane his neck to see the top of it. lightning bolts still slashed across its face with devastating ferocity, and thunder crashed and rumbled. the wall, he saw or thought he'd saw, was a monstrous dam raised against the sky, and over the lip of it was pouring something that was not water, a gigantic waterfall of blackness that was not water, crashing down across the face of it, a waterfall so solid and unbroken that he did not see the actual falling of it, but only had the hypnotic sense of its falling. watching it, he realized that it was not only thunder he heard, but the deep, awful roar of whatever was falling over the lip of the dam, the niagara-like rushing sound of something falling down from great height, falling from the unknown into the unknown. it seemed to him that the very ground beneath him was trembling with the roar.

her voice touched something immeasurably old in him, something that slept deep. it lulled the surface parts of his consciousness to sleep, allowing what was far more ancient to awaken. like the town, with its elaborate pretense of modern active life, the upper layers of his being became dulled, soothed, muffled, and what lay underneath began to stir in its sleep. the big curtain swayed a little to and fro. presently it might lift altogether....

her voice touched something immeasurably old in him, something that slept deep. it lulled the surface parts of his consciousness to sleep, allowing what was far more ancient to awaken. like the town, with its elaborate pretense of modern active life, the upper layers of his being became dulled, soothed, muffled, and what lay underneath began to stir in its sleep. the big curtain swayed a little to and fro. presently it might lift altogether....

...immediately after he caught sight of the lights marking the town, he pressed the ejection button and felt himself flung upward with a greater violence than he had expected. for a moment he was enveloped in darkness; then, as his body spun, he saw the lights of the town again. his fall was slackening and suddenly, as the chute popped open to its full extent, he was jerked sidewise and began swinging in wide arcs. an updraft caught the chute, forcing it back toward the looming peaks and slowing the swinging; but in a moment it slid out of the updraft and was floating smoothly downward.

...peering down, he tried to gauge how close he might be drifting to solid ground, but the darkness made it impossible to judge. he found himself tensing, then consciously willed himself to relax. when he hit, he had to be relaxed. the spatter of brilliance that was the space port was almost dead ahead. a blackness intervened to shield out the spaceport lights and he hit the ground, knees buckling under him...