He'd tried to keep track of the time.
He thought it had been a month; maybe more, but a month anyway.
And now the blue was solid over Earth, over all of it. There were still little swirls, little eddies of it here and there, but most of it—already, most of it had settled like a fixed shell, like the quiescent surface of a stagnant pool.
And somehow he'd accepted it.
They were all dead down there.
Cobalt blue had killed them all, killed them all....
Funny. It had a rhythm to it. Cobalt blue had killed them all, killed them all, Cobalt bombs had killed them all—
STOP IT!
But if they were all dead....
And if he were not dead....