Today they walked on through the wood to a point where they could see the lake which had been made by the strike so many years ago. It was more than five miles across and was said to be half a mile deep.
Coming back, they saw a number of uniformed men in the vale. They were gray and wrinkled and some were crippled. She felt her mother's fingers close tight on her arm, but curiosity wouldn't allow her to stop.
She stared. He was stooped, his face a mass of wrinkles, his hair snow-white. And he was gibbering. He seemed to recognize no one.
She was suddenly seized with a tremor. A wild raging impulse surged through her. Blindly and without thought, she ran, heedless of bushes, briars and stones. She didn't stop until she reached the dormitory. She fell face down on her bed and dug her nails into her cheeks and into the flesh about her eyes to make it contract.
Darth Brady was just past twenty, she knew....
Night brought a full silvery moon. She could see it from the window as it came above the wood, bright and giving no hint of the ships and activity on its scorched airless surface. Sleep was out of the question.
Slipping into her clothes and with shoes in hand, she swung across the windowsill and lowered herself to the ground. Like a wraith she moved among the cedars and on across the vale and into the wood.
The sound of the machinery in the factory behind her faded. The night was quiet but lustrous with tinted moonlight. It seemed that peace had come, that nowhere in the universe could there be strife. But as she looked at the stars and imagined the rings of blue and white dots, she knew.
Beyond the wood the water in the lake was amber in color, and as she approached, it flashed an image of the heavens and took on a darker hue, almost blood red.
She stood on an outcropping and listened to the sounds of crickets and frogs and thought she heard long sighs like breathing. She thought she saw something white flash on the surface, then dismissed it, tilted her head back and breathed deep of the clean night air.