Instead, there was a sense of well being, anticipated completeness, a merging of the often quite separated areas of thought, intuition, and appreciation.
Although at no great height, now the trees no longer grew so tall that they obscured his vision of the heights above. As he climbed they were replaced by shrubs shoulder high, then waist high, then merely low, creeping growths which his feet avoided without mental direction.
A curve of the ridge brought him to the first outcroppings of crystallized quartz. On them he saw no signs of scar left by the geologist's hammer, no imperfections where nodes may have been broken away. They were complete, singularly unweathered.
There was no path, nor hint of one, nor sign that either scientist or colonist had ever passed this way.
The ridge swung back into line, and still he climbed, effortlessly and without consciousness of passing time. Time and space and matter seemed to have receded far into the background of consciousness. Man's star-strewn civilization was no more than a dream. It was as if he, alone and complete, occupied the whole of the universe, encompassed it as he was encompassed by it.
Yet not alone! Their presence, which seemed so evanescent on the valley floor, was closer now, more clearly sensed. Almost as if, at any instant, the veil of blindness would disperse and They would stand revealed.
Now up the final slope of the mountain he threaded his way through higher outcroppings of a more perfectly formed quartz, with deeper amethystine hue scintillating in the Ceti sun's light, diffracted not only in the purples but into greens and reds and blues.
As he came around the base of one of these, there towering above he caught his first full view of the greater spires, pinnacles, buttresses, and arches of the mountain's crest.
It was the crystal palace.
The climb had been steep, steeper than it had appeared from below, yet his breathing was not labored, his mouth was not dry from thirst, nor were his muscles protesting the effort. He did not need to stop and rest, to gather his energy for the last steep assault upon the peak.