Now and Forever by Ray Bradbury Page A

electric lenses, behind them I would find eyes the color of minted silver, of fish that had never been born. White. Oh, God, this man is white, all white.
    And in my head I heard Quell, a shadow upon the air: “Some years ago the universe set off a light-year immensity of photographic flash. God blinked and bleached the captain to this color of sleeplessness and terror.”
    “What?” the captain demanded, for he had sensed our thoughts.
    “Nothing, sir,” I lied. “And there is nothing I can see that you do not.”
    I waited for his reply, but none was forthcoming. Instead, he turned and walked back to the head of the assembly and spoke. “How runs a ship in space, men?”
    The crew murmured, and one replied, “With tight seams and oxygen suits at the ready, sir.”
    “Well said,” the captain replied, and continued. “And how do you treat a meteor, men?”
    This time I gave him the answer. “A seven-second patch and all hands saved, sir.”
    The captain paused at this, and then gravely asked, “Then how do you swallow a flaming comet whole, men?”
    Silence.
    “No answer?” thundered the captain.
    Quell wrote invisibly on the air. “They have not as yet seen such comets, sir.”
    “They have not,” the captain said. “And yet such comets do come by. Redleigh?”
    Redleigh touched a control pad and a star chart descended from the ceiling before us. It was a three-dimensional work of art, a chart-maker’s multi-textual dream of the universe.
    The captain reached out a blind hand.
    “So, here, in miniature, is the universe.”
    The star chart blinked.
    The captain went on. “Will your eyes accomplish what mine, gone dead, cannot? From the regions of the Horsehead Nebula, among a billion fires, one special light burns. Blind, I feel its presence thus.”
    He touched the center of the screen. At that instant, a vast, long, beautiful comet was illumined before us.
    “Do I touch the maelstrom, Redleigh?” the captain said.
    “Yes, sir,” replied Redleigh, as the crew whispered at the vast beauty revealed.
    “Closer. Brighter,” commanded the captain.
    The image of the comet brightened to an immense ghost.
    “So,” said the captain. “Not a sun, a moon, or a world. Who’ll name it?”
    “Sir,” said Redleigh, gently. “That is merely a comet.”
    “No!” shouted the captain. “It is not merely a comet. That is a pale bride with flowing veil come back to bed her lost unbedded groom. Isn’t she lovely, men? A holy terror to the sight.”
    We stood silent, waiting.
    Redleigh, moving closer, said, “Captain, is that not the comet that first passed Earth some thirty years ago?”
    And I, half-remembering, spoke and gave its name: “Leviathan.”
    “Yes!” the captain said. “Speak up! Again!”
    “Leviathan,” I repeated, wondering what was going on. “The largest comet in history.”
    The captain whirled away from the star screen and turned his blind gaze upon us. “The brute chemistry of the universe thrown forth in light and trailing nightmare. Leviathan!”
    “Was it not Leviathan, Captain,” said Redleigh, softly, “that put out your eyes?”
    The men murmured and stared harder at the beautiful beast.
    “But to give me great vision!” the captain said. “Yes! Leviathan! I saw it close. I touched the hem of its great million-mile-long bridal veil. And then that virgin whiteness, jealous of my loving glance, rubbed out my sight. Thirty, thirty, thirty years ago. I still see it on my inner lids every night, so passing strange, so full of Arctic miracles, that huge white thunderhead of God. I ran to it. I offered up my fevered soul. And it snuffed me out ! And then it ran, leaving me. Yet look.”
    He touched the three-dimensional chart and the comet brightened yet again, loomed even larger.
    “Leviathan returns,” said the captain. “I have waited thirty long years, and the moment has finally come. And I have chosen you, men, to be with me on this starship to rush and meet that