“So what are we going to do about it?” said Montgomery. “Sit back and wait until steam-engine time catches up with us?”
Gunderson glanced up, his eyes dark, knowing Montgomery was mocking him. Instantly, the major regretted his words. “I didn’t mean it that way — I think you’ll find the answer in the Mirror.”
“That’s what Nagle keeps telling me! We went round and round over this yesterday, and all he’d do was smile and tell me to look in the Mirror.”
Montgomery didn’t know the answer to the argument of steam-engine time. Maybe a man couldn’t rise above his culture. He doubted, however, that he had to remain immersed to eye-level height in it forever. But he knew now, at least, what was holding Gunderson back! He wondered what the engineer would find when he searched the Mirror for the answer.
He went almost reluctantly to the appointment with his own Mirror. He felt he had reached a position of equilibrium which he hesitated to disturb. Admitting his own cowardice and inadequacies was more pleasant than what he might find next.
A world of nightmare swarmed up to meet him as soon as he donned the headpiece. He thought he was prepared for almost anything the Mirror could show, but this was something new.
He had found out how to control the speed, so to speak, of his approach to the image, and he held it down now, feeling his way slowly through the bewildering unknown. It was difficult to keep aware that this was the labyrinth of his own mind he was searching. He couldn’t believe that he had walked about daily for his thirty-five years with this nightmare and terror locked up inside him.
It seemed as if all the normal quality of his senses had been stripped away. He had no eyes to see, nor ears to hear, nor fingers with which to feel. But there was awareness of life, a sharp, ecstatic awareness that filled his whole being. It was intense, as if it alone occupied the whole world.
And then there was — death!
It had been approaching for long aeons, slowly dimming the ecstasy. But he screamed aloud when he finally recognized it for what it was. The gradual diminishment of life was like a fire going out in all the cells of his being, and the coursing liquids slowed and turned cold.