The Station remained motionless as long as the spectacle lasted — about three hours, until night intervened. And even after the sun had set and the shadows had spread over the ocean, the lurid glow of myriads of wings could still be discerned rising into the sky, hovering in massed ranks, and climbing effortlessly towards the light.

This performance had terrified Rheya, but it was no less disconcerting for me, although its novelty ought not to have been disturbing, since two or three times a year, and oftener when luck smiled on them, Solarists observed forms and creations never previously recorded.

The following night, an hour before the blue sunrise, we witnessed another effect: the ocean was becoming phosphorescent. Pools of grey light were rising and falling to the rhythm of invisible waves. Isolated at first, these grey patches quickly spread and joined together, and soon made up a carpet of spectral light extending as far as the eye could see. The intensity of the light grew progressively for some fifteen to twenty minutes, then the phenomenon came to a surprising end. A pall of shadow approached from the west, stretching along a front several hundred miles wide. When this moving shadow had overtaken the Station, the phosphorescent part of the ocean, retreating eastward, seemed to be trying to escape from the vast extinguisher. It was like an aurora put to flight, and retreating as far as the horizon, which was edged by a fading glow before the darkness conquered. Shortly afterwards, the sun rose above the ocean wastes, which were furrowed by a few solidified waves, whose mercurial reflections played on my window.

The phosphorescence was a recorded effect, sometimes observed before the eruption of an asymmetriad, but always indicative of a local increase in the activity of the plasma. Nevertheless, in the course of the next two weeks nothing happened either inside or outside the Station, except on one occasion when in the middle of the night I heard the sound of a piercing scream which came from no human throat. The shrill, protracted howling woke me out of a nightmare, and at first I thought that it was the beginning of another. Before falling asleep, I had heard dull noises coming from the direction of the laboratory, part of which lay directly over my cabin. It sounded like heavy objects and machinery being shifted. When I realized that I was not dreaming, I decided that the scream also came from above, but could not understand how it managed to penetrate the sound-proof ceiling. The terrible sounds went on for almost half an hour, until my nerves jangled and I was pouring with sweat. I was about to go up and investigate when the screaming stopped, to be replaced by more muffled sounds as of objects being dragged across the floor.

Rheya and I were sitting in the kitchen two days later when Snow came in. He was dressed as people dress on Earth after their day’s work, and looked like a different person, taller and older. He did not look at us, or pull up a chair, but stood at the table, opened a can of meat and began cramming it down between mouthfuls of bread. His jacket sleeve brushed against the greasy top of the can.

“Look out, Snow, your sleeve!”

“What?” he grunted, then went on stuffing himself with food as if he had not eaten for days. He poured out a glass of wine, drank it at a gulp, sighed, and wiped his lips. Then he looked at me with bloodshot eyes, and mumbled:

“So you’ve stopped shaving? Ah…”

Rheya cleared the table. Snow swayed on his heels, then pulled a face and sucked his teeth noisily, deliberately exaggerating the action. He stared at me insistently:

“So you’ve decided not to shave?” I made no reply. “Believe me,” he went on, “you’re making a mistake. That was how it started with him to…”

“Go and lie down.”

“What? Just when I feel like talking? Listen, Kelvin, perhaps it wishes well… perhaps it wants to please us but doesn’t quite know how to set about the job. It spies out desires in our brains, and only two per cent of mental processes are conscious. That means it knows us better than we know ourselves. We’ve got to reach an understanding with it. Are you listening? Don’t you want to? Why?” — he was sobbing by now — “why don’t you shave?”

“Shut up!… you’re drunk.”

“Me, drunk? And what if I am? Just because I drift about from one end of space to another and poke my nose into the cosmos, does that mean I’m not allowed to get drunk? Why not? You believe in the mission of mankind, don’t you, Kelvin? Gibarian told me about you before he started letting his beard grow… It was a very good description. Just don’t go to the lab, if you don’t want to lose your faith. It belongs to Sartorius — Faust in reverse… he’s looking for a cure for immortality! He is the last knight of the Holy Contact, the man we need. His latest discovery is pretty good too… prolonged dying. Not bad, eh? Agonia perpetua… of the straw… the straw hats and still you don’t drink, Kelvin?”

He raised his swollen eyelids and looked at Rheya, who was standing quite still with her back to the wall. Then he began chanting:

“O fair Aphrodite, child of Ocean, your divine hand…” He choked with laughter. “It fits, eh, Kel…vin…”

He broke off in a fit of coughing.

“Shut up! Shut up and get out!” I grated through clenched teeth.

“You’re chucking me out? You too? You don’t shave and you chuck me out? What about my warnings, and my advice? Interstellar colleagues ought to help each other! Listen Kelvin, let’s go down and open the traps and call out. It might hear us. But what’s its name? We have named all the stars and all the planets, even though they might already have had names of their own. What a nerve! Come on, let’s go down. We’ll shout it such a description of the trick it’s played us that it will be touched. It will make us silver symmetriads, pray to us in calculus, send us its blood-stained angels. It will share our troubles and terrors, and beg us to help it die. It is already begging us, imploring us. It implores us to help it die with every one of its creations. You’re not amused… but you know I’m just a joker. If man had more of a sense of humor, things might have turned out differently. Do you know what he wants to do? He wants to punish this ocean, hear it screaming out of all its mountains at once. If you think he’ll never have the nerve to submit his plan to that bunch of doddering ancients who sent us here to redeem sins we haven’t committed, you’re right — he is afraid. But he is only afraid of the little hat. He won’t let anybody see the little hat, he won’t dare, not Faust…”

I said nothing. Snow’s swaying increased. Tears were streaming down his cheeks and onto his clothes. He went on:

“Who is responsible? Who is responsible for this situation? Gibarian? Giese? Einstein? Plato? All criminals… Just you think, in a rocket a man takes the risk of bursting like a balloon, or freezing, or roasting, or sweating all his blood out in a single gush, before he can even cry out, and all that remains is bits of bone floating inside armored hulls, in accordance with the laws of Newton as corrected by Einstein, those two milestones in our progress. Down the road we go, all in good faith, and see where it gets us. Think about our success, Kelvin; think about our cabins, the unbreakable plates, the immortal sinks, legions of faithful wardrobes, devoted cupboards… I wouldn’t be talking this way if I weren’t drunk, but sooner or later somebody was bound to say it, weren’t they? You sit there like a baby in a slaughterhouse, and you let your beard grow… Who’s to blame? Find out for yourself.”

He turned slowly and went out, putting an arm out against the doorpost to steady himself. Then his footsteps died away along the corridor.

I tried not to look at Rheya, but my eyes were drawn to hers in spite of myself. I wanted to get up, take her in my arms and stroke her hair. I did not move.