and he was both in one and he was the life of
mankind, of animals, of plants.

As he waited in what seemed to be eternity, sunlight broke into his
sight and he saw a field of grass forming around his ship. Blue sky swam
into focus above him. White cloud patches formed in the blue as though
they had been ordered there by the word of creation. Thorus knew then
that he was on earth again, that he had come up from deep inside it.

Rising up, like one awakening uncertainly from sleep in a strange room,
he opened the ship's hatch and looked out upon the land. A flash of
light caught his eyes then, from above, and he looked up in wonder.

He gasped.

* * * * *

Aria, in the transparent cylinder, sinking down through the blue, like a
leaf, settling gently to the earth a hundred feet away.

She crawled out and stood looking across the field of grass at him, a
strange, smile on her face.

Thorus leaped from his ship and ran toward her. He ran silently. She
held out her hands and he grasped them tenderly, as he would grasp the
hands of a child. And all he could say was, "Aria. Aria."

"Thorus," she said, and there was courage and joy in her voice. "We've
come back."

They stared into each other's eyes for a long moment and then they were
close, and they held to each other and swayed.

"Do you know what's happened?" she said.

"Yes. You came back through hyper-space while _I_ came back through the
atoms." His voice was quiet. "Oh, Lord. Oh good and strange Lord. We
forgot that one of the great men twenty thousand years ago, proved that
space was curved."

"Yes." She stood away from him now, yet held to his hand. "We couldn't
escape from our place in life or ourselves or the good and the evil that
we have done. We came back to our earth and now we must do what we have
left undone."

There was much to be done.

Thorus looked around. He saw in the distance a crushed and smoking
ruins. "I've destroyed the Authority, but I've destroyed too much. Now
the people are in chaos."

Aria stood silently awhile, and then moved his arm. "But now you can
help me to heal them. You've seen in the microcosm, as I have in the
macrocosm that all life is one. Now we can show the people that outer
and inner space are not separate. We can show them how they exist
together and how there can be no escape in either or from either. It
will take a long time. But we will do it. And the doing will be grand."
Sh