When he slept the dream came more strongly than before.
The sere globe of Earth spun below him, frightfully riven by the half-healed wounds of some ancient cataclysm. Dull seas steamed and rain fell and vegetation crept across the scars, but there was life in one place only.
There was a ruined city like a forest of standing shards, rising stark and cold against a desolate sky. A horde of silent figures poured through its streets, bent upon a myriad errands whose purposes he might have guessed but dared not—he found himself one of the throng, yet his dread of understanding hid their intent as a mist might have obscured their faces. The crowd moved always eastward, its thousand faces rapt in impossible ecstasy. His own expectancy mounted to an unbearable pitch, stifling him with the promise of total understanding. He had only to follow them and—
He awoke to find himself crouched on the cold floor of his bedroom, drenched with perspiration and trembling violently from the strain of fighting back the monstrous concept toward which his dream had carried him.
Marta's voice was urgent in his ears. Marta's hands tugged at his arm, her breath was warm on his damp face. "Arnol, wake up! Arnol!"
For an instant he had an indescribable sense of being infinitely multiplied, as if this moment were reproduced forever, a single frame in a succession that stretched endlessly before and behind him. Then the dream tilted and swept away and he let Marta lead him, unresisting, back to bed.
For a long time he lay shivering in the darkness, his face hidden against her warm shoulder. And at last, when the tension had gone out of him, he slept again.
They came for him at daybreak, four burly patrolmen with Council insignia on their helmets and silver shock-cones in their hands. Heric looked back as he entered their copter to see Marta on the verandah, lovely in the soft disarray of her too-early rising, her eyes bright and blind with unshed tears.