It was not a noisy wind but the kind that suggests something very big and thin fresh from the horror of Infinite Space.

The survivor spoke to us though, or tried to. Mumbling through that matted brown beard of his, pale as death itself. I can__ say now if it was weakness from his wounds or what it was _ but we struggled to understand him. In fact we got nothing intelligible from him at all then. He seemed afraid, like any dying man probably would be, but he did seem more terrified than any dying man I__e seen before _ and I__e seen a few in my time. Let me tell you, Corsair or not, he grabbed whatever hand would hold his, and clenched it so tight his knuckles turned white! He kept fading out as we carried him on the stretcher board the medics brought with them. Looking back, I think he tried to warn us, poor bastard. He tried to tell us to leave him behind and go, but we wouldn__ listen. We thought we were better than the Corsairs, remember? We thought we would be all moral and upright and try to help him. __on__ say I didn__ warn you._ were the last words he said before losing consciousness. At least, those that we could make out. At the end of it all, he was right _ as it turned out, we couldn__ even help ourselves.

Then the wind came in with Bart and blew the vase of roses from the table. I stood and stared down at the crystal pieces and the petals scattered about. Why was the wind always trying to tell me something? Something I didn't want to hear!

The small launch bay was littered with debris. A powerful breeze tore at his black silk shirt as Kilroy made his way across it to the waiting shuttle, evoking a feeling like the fingers of fate were caressing his body. __he Hammer_ stepped over the body of one of his fallen crew without a trace of care or concern. The air was rushing past him, like a wind, out into space through the wounds in the side of his ship. Fatigued and desperate, the Hammer was running out of options. His ship was a mess, holed in a dozen places, the life support systems failing. Weakened hull sections were collapsing in pressure bursts. The vibrations that shook the deck beneath him now were not from the engines that once drove her forward, but now from the explosions down below, tearing her apart.

Grace will meet you in the valley, and her song will carry you home on the wind to another sky filled with ethereal beauty unfolding and love everlasting.

An infinite, inscrutable blackness has annihilated sight! Where is our universe? All crumbled away from us; and we, adrift in chaos, may hearken to the gusts of homeless wind, that go sighing and murmuring about in quest of what was once a world!