"Sometimes the wind dies. Sometimes, at night, you can see the lights from the city."
He kept staring. The dome, he thought, was a symbol of Man's littleness in a hostile universe.
But, too, it was a symbol of his courage and defiance. And perhaps Man's greatest strength lay in the very audacity that drove him to build such domes.
"You like it, don't you?" Maggie asked. "It's lonely and ugly and wild, but you like it."
He nodded, breathless.
She murmured, "Jacob used to say it isn't the strange sights that thrill spacemen—it's the thoughts that the sights inspire."
He nodded again, still staring.
She began to laugh. Softly at first, then more loudly. It was the kind of laughter that is close to crying.
"You've been standing there for ten minutes! You're going to walk again! You're going to be well!"