Well then, kiss me quick before you wake up.
I didn’t think I had been unconscious more than a few hours, but it seems that the gas had kept me in a state of suspended animation for something like 500 years.
He’d dug himself in under the corncrib and said he was gonna hibernate for ten years or so.
We had to dig him out from under the most peculiar things I ever saw.
That’s how they git you. They’re under the goddamned ground!
“We were underground,” she said. “Not just the pipeworks, everything!”
It’s a reward. Something the federation gives you for doing federal service.
"Our red-blooded biped wearing a spacesuit, as Justin accurately describes him, woke up a couple of minutes ago. And spoke to the nurses on duty.
“In plain English.”
There was a dead silence. Since no one else seemed ready to put the crucial question, Justin finally spoke up.
“What did he say?”
Elaine licked her lips. "Something like: ‘I never saw people like you before. I guess this must be your first time, right?’ "
Carson opened his eyes, and found himself looking upward into a flickering blue dimness.
Look at you! Glowing like a solar fire. You’re something special, Jim. You’re gonna rattle the stars, you are!
“A double star!” she whispered. “And done in gold leaf. That’s very unusual.”
Stars–all the stars–we didn’t know at all. We didn’t know anything. We thought six stars is a universe is something the Stars didn’t notice is Darkness forever and ever and ever and the walls are breaking in and we didn’t know we couldn’t know and anything–
Longer than you think, Dad! Longer than you think! Held my breath when they gave me the gas! Wanted to see! I saw! I saw! Longer than you think!
You don’t think the Instrumentality would waste the Scanners, do you?
Sensor scan to one-half parsec… Negative, Captain.
Space is dark, it is so endless
When you’re lost it’s so relentless
It is so big, it is so small
Why does man try to act so tall?
Is this the reason deep in our minds?
So you’ll forgive me if I take it one step at a time.
I’ve got Harper boots. I can walk anywhere now!
Harper to your word be true
Holder, crafter you also hew
To honesty, integrity, and respect
All others without regard to intellect
You own honor by the ocean. Unfair to upset my little teaspoonful.