Edgar Pangborn

“ And at the end the old one—his skin is quite black, and his down is white and gray—gave the remembered image of a two-moon night. He saw it some sixty years ago.
I have not even considered making an effort to describe it. My fingers will not hold this pencil much longer tonight. Oh, soaring buildings of white and amber, untroubled countryside, silver on curling rivers, a glimpse of open sea. A moon rising in clarity, another setting in a wreath of cloud, between them a wide wandering of unfamiliar stars. Here and there the angels, worthy after fifty million years to live in such night. ”

“ In the old life, Rak's age would have led him eventually to a few dim years with a band of women, who would have fed him until he chose to wander into deep jungle, preventing any from following. When far away, he would have sat in the shadows to wait—for starvation or the black marsh reptiles or a great mainland cat, uskaran, which never attacked a giant in the prime of strength. Rak would have taken no harm from the young men in this weakness: his own territory would have been inviolate, and he would have joined the women, in a taciturn farewell to life, only when teeth and arms had failed. ”

“ In a ship you can stay below, avoid the portholes, ignore the long rise and fall as the vessel encounters a rolling of the sea, and pretend your cabin is a landside thing: fine woodwork, carpet, all that, and if now and then you do feel a throb of engines or tilting of the world, why, Captain God's on the bridge and will see to everything. And yet it doesn't take too much courage to go stand at the bow and discover the wind in your face: a child can do it; a grown-up can recognize the captain as skilled but humanly mortal. ”

“ At the table farthest to the rear, dark as the smoke and like a part of it, a thin man with a black patch on one eye sat by himself, smiling. Before him stood a dirty trencher with the remains of supper, and a pewter mug. He sprawled with elbows hooked on the back of his chair, arms dangling, so quiet he might have been asleep, but the one good eye was open wide and one does not sleep with a frozen smile. When the eye moved to examine Ben and Shawn with no sign of interest, the rest of his face took no part in the act. ”

“ With studied, self-conscious contempt for his own weakness, he strode out noisily into the Hall of Music with a fresh-lit candle. This same bravado, he knew, might dissolve at the first alien noise. While it lasted, though, it was invigorating.
The windows were still black with night. As if the candle-flame had found its own way, Brian was standing by the ancient marimba in the main hall, the light slanting carelessly away from his thin, high-veined hand. Nearby, on a small table, sat the Stone Age clay image he had brought long ago from the Directors' meeting room on the fifteenth floor. ”

“ It could have been a night anywhere in the Galaxy, up there beyond torn branches, stars, and red moon in a vagueness of cloud. Blue fireflies ...
But there was a child wailing somewhere. Far-off and weak, a dim rise and fall of sound, grief and remoteness. A waterfall? Wind in upper branches? But they were still, and the sound carried the timbre of animal life. Dorothy murmured, "It's been crying that way ever since moon-rise." She came closely into his arms.
"I can read one thing inside of you—you're not scared."
"I'm not, Paul?" ”

“ Wandering to the other side of the room, fingering the stacks of sheet music and the bound volumes, Judge Mann reflected that a judgeship is a very damned comfortable thing, to the nerves of pocketbook and of vanity, until a moment of self-appraisal brings you the image of a bewildered monkey in a black gown. An image caught as though in multiple mirrors. No good turning your head aside: a mirror in every wall, and the monkey, poor puzzled well-meaning bastard, in every mirror. ”

“ What he had said to Ben concerning storm and calm was banal, he reflected, but truth has a way of hiding in the blur of the commonplace and must be hunted there from time to time: no good rushing upstairs or outdoors in search of a paper that lies on the table under your nose. We do pass continually from storm to calm—every one of us, even Madam Prudence Jenks. So meet them both, in the atmosphere of doubt where honesty is—whether in fog over quicksand, or on firm-appearing ground like this under a sunny sky of June. ”

“ TEJRON: I knew—I knew—
WRIGHT: What, my dear? I don't understand.
TEJRON: Oh, I should keep silent: this is for you to decide. But you've said it. You won't leave us.
WRIGHT: No. No, I won't ever leave you. This is my home.
SLADE: But—
SPEARMAN: Can't argue with the passion of an expatriate. The grass is always greener—
PAUL: It could be no other way, Captain, at least for Dr. Wright and me, and I'm certain my wife will say the same when she comes back.
WRIGHT: In some ways, Captain, the distance between Earth and Lucifer is greater than the simple light years between our two stars. ”

“ Shawn, that you cannot serve a good end by evil means."
"Ochone!—a Puritan indeed but very young, now that's no lie. I know that talk, that doctrine, Ben, know it of old, a stick to beat the young and no truth in it, and so I deny it altogether."
"I will affirm it while I live. Damnation, Mr. Shawn, it's no article of faith, only a plain observation any man can make. Your great end lies in the future, but the future grows from the present. The evil you do in the present can only generate evil in the future and not the good end you dream of." ”

“ She would retain the look of them as vividly as though each juror had sat in her studio under the clever lights while she examined the faults, planes, good points, chatted with them to let self-consciousness and vanity subside, searched for the portrait they wouldn't see, and at last finished her shots—one to please the customer if possible; one, if lucky, to please herself as a frozen instant of relative truth. ”

“ Paul saw her white hands starfished on the gray of Mijok's chest. She said, "Mijok, I'm tired and sick. Will you carry me?"
Spearman groaned: "Ann, what—Use your head...."
But Mijok knelt at once to make a cradle of his arms, and Christopher Wright said, "Why not? Why shouldn't we need each other?" Mijok went ahead with her on the blind trail.
Paul heard Spearman choke: "I would have carried her." It was not meant to be heard. Paul looked away, hearing also the deep precision of the giant's voice exploring the mystery of words: "You are my people. I will not ever be much time far from you." ”

“ Uncle John's telling of the story had never given Ben much realizing sense of the smothering terror of fog at sea. He had it now, in the delicate presence of the Hera's image. Wet smoke pressing on the eyeballs of men seeking to live; no guide, no refuge, no gleam of direction anywhere, only merciless whiteness concealing fangs. A whiteness like snow, a silence like the silence of snow that muffles footsteps in a winter night. ”

“ That one had come to him by the mind's magic when the night beyond his window was in a moment of supreme clarity and peace, and Trinity's delicate chimes had struck the morning hour of two o'clock, and the wind died: The defense never rests.
The air was still today, pure and sharp, the sky a clean splendor above the smear of the city. Something of it could be felt through the high eastern window behind them. Callista would have looked upward into that strong blue of infinity through the detention cell bars. ”

“ The white moon was half the size of the planet Earth, so far away that its glow was scarcely more than that of a star, but Paul knew that by what light it gave the pygmies could see him smile in response to their greetings. They would be studying him, trying to weigh the tone of his answer. One of them might save my life tomorrow; certainly I shall have to see some of them die. They are people.
There were two visible planets to follow the wandering of the no longer alien star that was the sun. One was hidden tonight; the other, red like Mars, hung over the eastern jungle in tranquillity. ”

“ Some man must have begotten the thing, some woman borne it in pain and maybe loved it a while. Marsh would not even eat like a man, but like a peevish dog, gulping the tedious food and returning to his one-eyed vacancy. For Daniel Shawn Ben had been obliged to learn hatred, a waiting, despairing hatred that even now might hold some tormenting elements of love or at least of searching. Before the stalking dead man Marsh, Ben could only recoil, watchful, glad that, except for the necessary rule of the starboard watch, Marsh let him alone. ”

“ Paul Mason squirmed into his pilot's seat. It was good, he thought, that they could at least meet the challenge of [15] the unexplored with adequate bodies. Wright was dryly indestructible; Ed Spearman a gaunt monolith; the plumpness of Sears Oliphant had nothing flabby. The women were in the warm vigor of a youth that had never known illness. As for his own body, Paul felt for it now a twinge of amused admiration, as if he were seeing an animated statue by an artist better than himself: slender, tough, nothing too much, built for endurance and speed—it would serve. ”

“ Falling there, in the hazy night, sick with a cruel poison, Ann Doherty could easily have rolled down that short slope into the water. In cross-examination, this level-minded fact-lover would willingly say so. Sick—Warner's body involuntarily shuddered. He felt suffocated, and as though he too were falling in a darkness, nothing upholding him but a single thread of belief: Callista had no criminal intent. A belief that could never be demonstrated as a truth; never at least by the sort of demonstration that would be rightly, intelligently demanded by such a man as Sergeant Shields. ”