He ran.
He slipped and fell and rolled into the fire.
A hand reached down and jerked him from the fire, flung him to one side, and a voice cried out, a cry of rage and warning.
Then the universe collapsed and he felt himself flying apart and, as suddenly, he was together once again.
He lay upon a floor and he scrambled to his feet. His hand was burned and he felt the pain of it. His clothes were smoldering and he beat them out with his uninjured hand.
A voice said, "I'm sorry, sir. This should not have happened."
The man was tall, much taller than the Kimonians he had seen before. Nine feet, perhaps. And yet not nine feet, actually. Not anywhere near nine feet. He was no taller, probably, than the taller men of Earth. It was the way he stood that made him seem so tall, the way he stood and looked, and the way his voice sounded.
And the first Kimonian, Bishop thought, who had ever shown age. For there was a silvering of the temple hairs and his face was lined, like the faces of hunters or sailors may be lined from squinting into far distances.
They stood facing one another in a room which, when Bishop looked at it, took his breath away. There was no describing it, no way to describe it - you felt as well as saw it. It was a part of you and a part of the universe and a part of everything you'd ever known or dreamed. It seemed to thrust extensions out into unguessed time and space, and it had a sense of life and the touch of comfort and the feel of home.
Yet, when he looked again, he sensed a simplicity that did not square with his first impressions. Basic simplicities that tied in with the simple business of living out one's life, as if the room and the folks who lived within its walls were somehow integrated, as if the room were trying its best not to be a room, but to be a part of life, so much a part of life that it could pass unnoticed.