ever deeper, until there was nothing but the blue, sleepy water.

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