But Burl raised his eyes to the heavens. He saw the stars in all their
glory, and he was the first human in two thousand years and more to look
at them from this planet. There were myriads upon myriads of them,
varying in brightness from stabbing lights to infinitesimal twinklings.
They were of every possible color. They hung in the sky above him,
immobile and unthreatening. They had not descended. They were very
beautiful.
Burl stared. And then he noticed that he was breathing deeply, with a
new zest. He was filling his lungs with clean, cool, fragrant air such
as men were intended to breathe from the beginning, and of which Burl
and many others had been deprived. It was almost intoxicating to feel so
splendidly alive and unafraid.
There was a slight sound. Saya stood beside him, trembling a little. To
leave the others had required great courage, but she had come to realize
that if Burl was in danger she wished to share it.
They heard the nightwind and the orchestra of night-singers. They
wandered aside from the cave-mouth and Saya found completely primitive
and satisfying pride in the courage of Burl, who was actually not afraid
of the dark! Her own uneasiness became something which merely added
savor to her pride in him. She followed him wherever he went, to examine
this and consider that in the nighttime. It gave her enormous
satisfaction at once to think of danger and to feel so safe because of
his nearness.
Presently they heard a new sound in the night. It was very far away, and
not in the least like any sound they had ever heard before. It changed
in pitch as insect-cries do not. It was a baying, yelping sound. It
rose, and held the higher note, and abruptly dropped in pitch before it
ceased. Minutes later it came again.
Saya shivered, but Burl said thoughtfully:
"That is a good sound."
He didn't know why. Saya shivered again. She said reluctantly:
"I am cold."
It had been a rare sensation in the lowlands. It came only after one of
the infrequent thunderstorms, when wetted human bodies were exposed to
the gusty winds that otherwise never blew. But here the nights grew cold
after sundown. The heat of the ground would radiate to outer space with
no clouds to intercept it, and before dawn the temperature might drop
nearly to freezing. On a planet so close to its sun, however, there
would hardly be more than light hoar-frost at any time.
The two of them went back to the cave. It was warm there, because of the
close packing of bodies and many breaths. Burl and Saya found places to
rest and dozed off, Saya's hand again trustfully in Burl's.
He still remained awake for a long time. He thought of the stars, but
they were too strange to estimate. He thought of the trees and grass.
But most of his impressions of this upper world were so remote from
previous knowledge that he could only accept them as they were and defer
reflecting upon them until later. He did feel an enormous complacency at
having led his followers here, though.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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