midday sun
Our flight checked ; we seemed to hover within , then to sway onward -- slowly , cautiously . A mist danced ahead of me -- a mist that grew steadily thinner . We stopped , wavered -- the mist cleared . I looked out into translucent , green distances ; shot with swift prismatic gleamings ; waves and pulsings of luminosity like midday sun glow through green , tropic waters : dancing , scintillating veils of sparkling atoms that flew , hither and yon , through depths of nebulous splendour ! And Lakla and Larry and I were , I saw , like shadow shapes upon a smooth breast of stone twenty feet or more above the surface of this place -- a surface spangled with tiny white blossoms gleaming wanly through creeping veils of phosphorescence like smoke of moon fire . We were shadows -- and yet we had substance ; we were incorporated with , a part of , the rock -- and yet we were living flesh and blood ; we stretched -- nor will I qualify this -- we _ stretched _ through mile upon mile of space that weirdly enough gave at one and the same time an absolute certainty of immense horizontal lengths and a vertical concentration that contained nothing of length , nothing of space whatever ; we stood _ there _ upon the face of the stone -- and still we were _ here _ within the faceted oval before the screen of radiance ! `` Steady ! ''