little more thrust now; the grade’s getting steeper.”
The gears groaned. The ship nosed up. The sky brightened
in Lavon’s face. Despite himself, he began to be frightened.
His lungs seemed to burn, and in his mind he felt his long
fall through nothingness toward the chill slap of the water as
if he were experiencing it for the first time. His skin itched
and burned. Ctould he go up there again? Up there into the
burning void, the great gasping agony where no life should
go?
The sand bar began to level out and the going became a
little easier. Up here, the sky was so close that the lumbering
motion of the huge ship disturbed it. Shadows of wavelets
ran across the sand. Silently, the thick-barreled bands of
blue-green algae drank in the light and converted it to oxy-
gen, writhing in their slow mindless dance just under the
long mica skylight which ran along the spine of the ship. In
the hold, beneath the latticed corridor and cabin floors,
whirring Vortae kept the ship’s water in motion, fueling them-
selves upon drifting organic particles.
One by one, the figures wheeling outside about the ship
waved arms or cilia and fell back, coasting down the slope
of th? sand bar toward the familiar world, dwindling and
disappearing. There was at last only one single Euglena, half-
plant cousin of the Protos, forging along beside the space-
ship into the marshes of the shallows. It loved the light, but
finally it, too, was driven away into deeper, cooler waters, its
single whiplike tentacle undulating placidly as it went. It was