Until one
realized that this was simply the dark side of Earth, the spectacle was
one of hair-raising horror.
After a moment Cochrane said with a carefully steadied voice:
"My most disparaging opinions of Earth were never as black as this!"
"Wait," said Babs confidently.
Cochrane waited. He had to hold carefully in his mind that this visible
abyss, this enormity of purest dark, was not an opening into nothingness
but was simply Earth at night as seen from space.
Then he saw a faint, faint arch of color forming at its edge. It spread
swiftly. Immediately, it seemed, there was a pinkish glowing line among
the multitudinous stars. It was red. It was very, very bright. It became
a complete half-circle. It was the light of the sun refracted around the
edge of the world.
Within minutes--it seemed in seconds--the line of light was a glory
among the stars. And then, very swiftly, the blazing orb which was the
sun appeared from behind Earth. It was intolerably bright, but it did
not brighten the firmament. It swam among all the myriads of myriads of
suns, burning luridly and in a terrible silence, with visibly writhing
prominences rising from the edge of its disk.
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