The newsman seemed conscious of everything at once. He heard Beenay
croak, 'I've got it. At your cameras, men!' and then there was the strange
awareness that the last thread of sunlight had thinned out and snapped.
Simultaneously he heard one last choking gasp from Beenay, and a queer
little cry from Sheerin, a hysterical giggle that cut off in a rasp -- and a
sudden silence, a strange, deadly silence from outside.
And Latimer had gone limp in his loosening grasp. Theremon peered into
the Cultist's eyes and saw the blankness of them, staring upward, mirroring
the feeble yellow of the torches. He saw the bubble of froth upon Latimer's
lips and heard the low animal whimper in Latimer's throat.
With the slow fascination of fear, he lifted himself on one arm and
turned his eyes toward the blood-curdling blackness of the window.
Through it shone the Stars!
Not Earth's feeble thirty-six hundred Stars visible to the eye; Lagash
was in the center of a giant cluster. Thirty thousand mighty suns shone down
in a soul-searing splendor that was more frighteningly cold in its awful
indifference than the bitter wind that shivered across the cold, horribly
bleak world.
Theremon staggered to his feet, his throat, constricting him to
breathlessness, all the muscles of his body writhing in an intensity of
terror and sheer fear beyond bearing. He was going mad and knew it, and
somewhere deep inside a bit of sanity was screaming, struggling to fight off
the hopeless flood of black terror. It was very horrible to go mad and know
that you were going mad -- to know that in a little minute you would be here
physically and yet all the real essence would be dead and drowned in the
black madness. For this was the Dark -- the Dark and the Cold and the Doom.
The bright walls of the universe were shattered and their awful black
fragments were falling down to crush and squeeze and obliterate him.
He jostled someone crawling on hands and knees, but stumbled somehow
over him. Hands groping at his tortured throat, he limped toward the flame
of the torches that filled all his mad vision.
'Light!' he screamed.
Aton, somewhere, was crying, whimpering horribly like a terribly
frightened child. 'Stars -- all the Stars -- we didn't know at all. We
didn't know anything. We thought six stars in a universe is something the
Stars didn't notice is Darkness forever and ever and ever and the walls are
breaking in and we didn't know we couldn't know and anything -- '
Someone clawed at the torch, and it fell and snuffed out. In the
instant, the awful splendor of the indifferent Stars leaped nearer to them.
On the horizon outside the window, in the direction of Saro City, a
crimson glow began growing, strengthening in brightness, that was not the
glow of a sun.
The long night had come again.
