As Thorus looked upon the earth again and saw the terrible destruction he had wrought, he trembled. There was the realization in him that, beneath his consciousness, had lain the hope that, after he had wiped clean the earth, Aria's healing power would remake it. But now there would be no healing, and for thousands of years earth would lie a smoking ruins with the people crawling about its shattered surface like bugs.
He turned from all he saw. He closed his eyes and threw his ship out into space, threw it away into the fathomless void. He must escape from the universe, must flee from the horror that filled him at the desolation he had wrought. Straight out into space, out into the forever, where earth would cease to exist, where he and his remorse would be lost.
GLEAMING suns and galaxies streaked past yet he seemed within himself to be hanging motionless in an infinite sea of blackness while he knew that the speed of him cracked through the barrier of time and space; knew that it was a speed beyond any conceived by the mind of man. On into forgetfulness, escape beyond his memory, faster and farther away than his mind, so far away that even earth would disappear in his thought.
As incredible distances stretched almost to breaking between himself and earth, he thought: So this is the end. For all I've been and wanted to be, this is it. A nothingness beyond the universe.
But as the last word went from his thought, he saw a greenish blue ball of light rush toward him. He watched it inflate in the port. It enveloped the whole ship. The suns and the galaxies had faded into nothingness. He was aware of sinking into eternal depths but at the same time he felt himself soaring until sinking and soaring flowed into each other. After a time, he saw shimmering white crystals encircling his ship. And then the encircling crystals became one snowflake reflecting light like the moon.
A great wonder filled him and he stared in overwhelming awe. He heard his own heartbeat in his body and outside the ship, holding the ship in an eternal throbbing; heard the flowing of his own blood like a turbulent river; heard his breathing become the ebb and flow of wind, like the sound of surf. His body too became the soil of earth and its rock and water and he was deeply conscious of growth all through him. He was birth and death and he was both in one and he was the life of mankind, of animals, of plants.
As he waited in what seemed to be eternity, sunlight broke into his sight and he saw a field of grass forming around his ship. Blue sky swam into focus above him. White cloud patches formed in the blue as though they had been ordered there by the word of creation. Thorus knew then that he was on earth again, that he had come up from deep inside it.
Rising up, like one awakening uncertainly from sleep in a strange room, he opened the ship's hatch and looked out upon the land. A flash of light caught his eyes then, from above, and he looked up in wonder.
He gasped.