From chapter twelve-now this is one of the most astounding examples of descriptive prose I've ever read....
Quote:*"Monosulfide or polysulfides," the comlog had said: well, whatever constituted these tawny cumulus in the diffuse daylight, sunset set them afire with rust-red light, brilliant crimson streaks, bloody tractus streaming away from the main cloud masses like crimson pennants, rose-colored fibratus weaving together the cirrus ceiling like muscle strands under the flesh of a living body, billowing masses of cumulus so white that they made me blink as if snowblinded, golden, striated cirroform spilling out fron the boiling cumulonimbus towers like masses of blond hair blowing back from pale, upturned faces. The light deepened, richened, became so intense that it brought tears to my eyes, and then it became even more brilliant. Great, nearly, horizontal shafts of Godlight burned between the columns, illuminating some here, casting others into shadow there, passing through ice clouds and bands of vertical rain on their way, spilling hundreds of simple rainbows and a thousand multiple rainbows. The shadows moved from bruise-black depths, shading more and more of the still-writhing billows of cululus and nimbus, finally climbing into the high cirrus and pond-rippled autocumulus, but at first the shadows brought not grayness or darkness, but an infinate palette of subtleties: gleaming gold dimming to bronze, pure white becoming cream and then dimming to to sepia and shade, crimson with the boldness of spilled blood slowly darkening to the rust-red of dried blood, then fading to an autumnal tawny russet. The hull of my kayak lost its glint and the parasail above me quit catching the light as this vertical terminator moved past and above me. Slowly these shadows crept higher---it must have taken at least thirty minutes, although I was too absorbed in watching to check my comlog---and when they reached the cirrus ceiling, it was as if someone had dimmed all the lights in the temple.
*It was one hell of a sunset.
I am now in The Mountians of Heavens where Raul and A. Bettik have shot the cable and rockclimbed up the jumar point. Even more incredible descriptions of the mountians of The Middle Kingdom. Simmons knows something about everything, or, at least, he researches the hell out of everything! Wow! This sucker can build a fricking planet in 5 pages!!!!!!!!!! ***** Before, you are wise; after, you are wise. In between you are otherwise. Fravashi saying (from the formularies of Osho the Fool) <i></i>
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