And then Lehman Willets found himself standing on a level plain of brilliantly gleaming whiteness that stretched out for incredible distances around him. He waited for his vision to adjust. But there was no perceptible horizon that he could discern, however fiercely he peered. And then he realized he could make out darker moving patches off in each direction. When he looked directly at them, they suddenly sprang into close, tight focus, though he couldn’t understand how that was possible. They were each a scene from a different part of town, and how could that be? The first one he looked at was of Ross Devries, still out in the backyard and moving unhappily around the doctor’s own immobile form. It was odd to see yourself in such a strange condition. Rather like one of those ‘floating above your body’ experiences that people talked about having when they’d been lying in sick beds. But in terms of distances viewed, this wasn’t really much of a stretch.
