New America

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The boy stood at sunrise on the edge of his world, Clouds torrented up along the gap which clove it They burned in the light Wind sang, cold and wholly pure.

A spearfowl broke from those mists to soar further aloft, magnificence upon wings the hue of steel For an instant the boy did not move, He could not Then he screamed, once, before he fled.

He took shelter in a thicket until he had mastered both tears and trembling. Boys do not tell anyone, least of all those who love them, that they are haunted.

“Coming in, now,” said Jack O’Malley over the radio phone, and got to work at a difficult approach.

On its northeastern corner, that great tableland named High America did not slope in mountains and valleys, to reach at last the sea level which lay eight kilometers straight beneath. Here the rim fell in cliffs and talus until vapors drowned vision. Only at one place were the heights climbable: where a fault had driven them apart to make the Cleft. And the drafts which it channeled were treacherous.

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