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A paltry quarter hostly gold to pale bronze as it slowly coasted into the fringe of the larger orb&039;s shadow Sun, Earth, and Moon were lining up It was theextraordinary, really, yet fro blanket of Earth&039;s at the sight froht side, which now stretched across the Atlantic and the Americas from the North Sea to California and from Ghana to Pitcairn Island
The other planets were mostly on the other side of the sun, as far away as people at the other end of a big house
The stars were frosty, diht-ed houses across the ocean
The Earth-Moon pair, huddling by the solar fire, were almost alone in a black forest twenty ly lonely situation, especially if you i in the forest, creeping closer, shaking the starlight here and there as it bent the black twigs of space
Far out in the North Atlantic, a dash of dark spray in his eyes roused Wolf Loner froedhigh in the thickening black cloudbank to the west close on the coppery moon He kneas the eclipse that listen of his drea building - Diana in peril The shouldering black waves and the wind on the curved drum of the sail soon rocked and harshly crooned away the disturbing vision
"Sanity is rhythm," Wolf Loner said loudly to no one within five miles, or, for all he kneo hundred - the latter being the distance he reckoned he was froun at Bristol
He checked the link betweendory slanting into the west, then slid himself feet first into the coffin-wide cabin for a warer nap
Three thousand miles south of the dory, the ato h an invisibleradio waves In the air-conditioned and darkened astrodoht hour, watched the eclipse, and a few younger couples necked discreetly or played footsies, which the foot-glove fad facilitated, while from the main ballroonerian strains of neojazz Captain Sithwise tallied the number of known Brazilian fascists of the unpredictable new sort on the passenger list, and guessed that a revolution had been scheduled
At Coney Island, in the heavy shadow of the new boardwalk, Sally Harris, her hands clasped back of her neck under the sunburst of her pere explosion hairdo, held herself hued crosswise at the backstrap of her bra through the silky black fabric of her Giood ti the eclipse froe Rocket All ten tops"
"Aants to gawk at a moon that&039;s sick, sick, sick," Jake retorted a bit breathlessly "Sal, where the hell are the hooks and eyes?"
"In the bottorandmother&039;s trunk," she inforer down the self-sealing, ear is forward, not aft, you Second Avenue sailor," she said and gave a deft twist "There! See why it&039;s called the Vanishing Bra?"
"Christ!" he said, "they&039;re like hot popovers Oh, Sal"
"A, "but re oods with reverence"
Don Guilleruan cloud-jungle, the inky glea el presidente&039;s stronghold in the dark of the eclipse had been a purely theatric idea, a third-act i under her negligee In Algiers Decision, which hadn&039;t saved that drama from a turkey&039;s fate
Eclipses weren&039;t all that dark, it turned out, and el presidente&039;s three jet fighters could chop up this ancient Seabee in seconds, ending the Revolution of the Best, or at least the contribution to it of the self-proclaiinal Williaua in the 1850&039;s
If he did e to bail out, they would capture him He didn&039;t think he could stand an electric bull prod except by turning into a three-year-old
Too ht! "You&039;re a typical lousy bit-player," Don Guillermo shouted up at the brazen moon "You don&039;t kno to efface yourself!"
Two thousand miles east of Wolf Loner and his cloudbank, Dai Davies, Welsh poet, vigorous and drunk, waved good night from near the dark loom of the Severn Experi into the cloudless Bristol Channel beyond Portishead Point, while the spreading glow of dawn erased the stars behind him
"Sleep well, Cinderella," he called "Wash your face now, but be sure to colish novelist, sickish and sober, observed finically, "Dai, you say that as if you were afraid she wouldn&039;t"
"There&039;s a first ti, Ricky-bach," Dai told hih about the moon"
"You worry about her tooa veritable vomit of science fiction"
"Ah, science fiction&039;s my food and drink - well, anyhow my food Vo of the book-vo her spewing up, after all of Spenser&039;s musty hates, the collected works of HG Wells, Arthur C Clarke, and Edgar Rice Burroughs?"
Hillary&039;s voice grew astringent "Science fiction is as trivial as all artistic forms that deal with phenomena rather than people You should know that, Dai Aren&039;t the Welsh warmhearted?"
"Cold as fish," the poet replied proudly "Cold as the reater power in life than you sentienerate Saxo-Normans will ever realize" He indicated the Station with a sweep of his arm "Power from Mona!"
"David!" the novelist exploded "You know perfectly well that this tidal power toy is ainst atomic power because of the weapons aspect And please don&039;t call the y Mona&039;s a Welsh island, if you will - Anglesey - but not a Welsh planet!"
Dai shrugged, peering west at the diht to me and that&039;s all that counts All culture is but a sop to infant hurin, "there are reed coldly, "four Americans and an indeterht to have cured hu milliards on space"
"Still, there are men on Mona, on their way to the stars"
"Four Alander Wolf Loner who sailed from Bristol lastthe world&039;s wealth on his adventurous whi his eyes off the west
"Be damned to Loner, that Yankee anachronis the fishes But the Americans write fine science fiction and ht, Mona-bach! Come back dirty-faced or clean, but come back"