I closed my eyes, squeezing them as tightly as I could, but it was all in vain, for it was only a few moments later that I heard a soft blink, and when I opened them I saw a rivulet of milk flowing merrily by my right, frothing as if it had just been milked. I moved my shoulder and was delighted by his mobility so I said decisively:
“Adam I am now. I choked trying to breathe in the foul-smelling mixture of gases that assaulted my nostrils. I opened my eyes and looked at the surreal landscape around me. Or Pierre?”
I began to think with the greatest speed I thought myself capable of was the shuttle pilot with the dislocated shoulder, trapped in a survival suit with only five hours of oxygen, hopelessly lost in an apocalyptic landscape of sharp, inhospitable rocks. She liked me as I liked her. The planet definitely had both water and oxygen, the terraforming teams weren’t just randomly launched, but to what extent we could use both was hard to say without the portable lab up and running. I tried to close my mind so that the rest of it couldn’t be read because it was clear to me now that my hallucinations had taken the form of the image I had formed of heaven as a
