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greater stars, the blood-red crescent of the sun's disc sank as it tolled
out: Boom!... Boom!... Boom!...
What had happened to Cavor? All through that tolling I stood there
stupidly, and at last the tolling ceased.
And suddenly the open mouth of the tunnel down below there, shut like an
eye and vanished out of sight.
Then indeed was I alone.
Over me, around me, closing in on me, embracing me ever nearer, was the
Eternal; that which was before the beginning, and that which triumphs over
the end; that enormous void in which all light and life and being is but
the thin and vanishing splendour of a falling star, the cold, the
stillness, the silence--the infinite and final Night of space.
The sense of solitude and desolation became the sense of an overwhelming
presence that stooped towards me, that almost touched me.
"No," I cried. "No! Not yet! not yet! Wait! Wait! Oh, wait!" My voice
went up to a shriek. I flung the crumpled paper from me, scrambled back
to the crest to take my bearings, and then, with all the will that was in
me, leapt out towards the mark I had left, dim and distant now in the very
margin of the shadow.
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