He turned from watching Louie, pitying him, and made the last sharp climb with no more effort than the whole had been. Now he drew near to the towering structures of the crest, now he was beside them. Now he walked beneath and through an arch which seemed almost a gothic entrance. And stood transfixed in ecstasy. Magnificent the dreams of man that took form in steel and stone and glass, yet none matched the lightness, the grace, the intricacy, the sublime simplicity of these interwoven crystalline structures where light from the noonday sun separated prismatically until it filled the air with myriads of living, darting, colored sparks of fire above him. Where the breeze that blew through the vibrating spires made blended sounds the ear could barely endure in rapture. As once, in childhood, he had stood in a grove of giant trees that laced their limbs in gothic splendor above him, now again he stood, lost in time and space and being, lost in vision and in music which neither had nor needed form nor beginning nor end. And knew it was a simple tool; Their concession to the mind of man, to bridge the gap between Their minds and his. Without wondering more, he sank down upon the mossy turf of the floor and lay supine to gaze upward, to follow line to blended line until they seemed mirrored into infinity. The darting lights above him whirled, spiraled up, then down, clockwise, then counterclockwise, reminding him ... reminding him ... ... the internal structure of crystals.... 25 Across the universe, two billion years ago, there too a planet coalesced from the mutually attracted vortices of twisted space; gases compelled by gravitational forces solidifying to hardened matter, forming a crust over a molten core. In the soupy atmosphere of metallic salts and gases, tortured and rent by electrical storms of incalculable fury, among the vibrating crystals one formed that was aware. Not in the sharp awareness of later times, but at the first only ill-defined, perhaps no more than the awareness of acid chains of molecules that formed into non-crystalline viscid protoplasm on another planet across the universe. No distinct line of cleavage where affinity to other chemicals left off and sentient selectivity began marked the distinction here as in that protoplasm. As with its cousin across the universe, the one-celled amoeba, these crystals too were sensitive to light, to heat, to cold--to food. Ill-defined, but distinct already from the non-sentient crystals about them, these life forms grew through absorbing from the rich and soupy atmosphere those elements necessary to growth, to branching, to cleavage into new individuals. What is awareness? At what point even in protoplasmic life does it appear? The amoeba avoids pain, seeks food, reproduces itself, and blunders blindly through its environment in search for condition more favorable to its continuance. In the monotony of a purposeless existence, most humans do no more than that.