And there was barking, absolutely deafening barking. Nita had to smile at that, because she knew that bark extremely well. It was Kit s dog, Ponch, barking excitedly about something, which wasn t at all strange. What was strange was the absolute hugeness of the sound, in the darkness. The darkness, Nita thought, and shivered once as the image, which hadn t been clear this morning, suddenly presented itself. Record, she said to the manual, and sat back with her eyes closed. Space, with stars in it. Well, you would expect space to be dark. But slowly, slowly, some of the stars seemed to go faint, as if something filmy was getting between her and them, like a cloud, a creeping fog Slowly the dark fog had crept across Nita s field of vision. It swallowed the stars. Now that she was awake, the image gave her the creeps. Yet in the dream, somehow this hadn t been the case. She saw it happening; she was somehow not even surprised by it. In the dream, she knew what it meant, and its only effect on Nita had been to make her incredibly angry. She opened her eyes now, feeling a little flushed with the memory of the anger. Nita looked down at the manual, where the last line of the Speech, recording her last impression, was blinking quietly on and off, waiting for her to add anything further. She searched her memory, then shook her head. Nothing new was coming up for now. Close the entry, she said to the manual, and that last line stopped blinking. Nita shut the manual and reached out to pick up her sandwich and have another bite. It was frustrating to get these bits and pieces and not understand what they meant; but, eventually, when she got enough of them together, they would start to make some kind of sense. I just hope that it happens in time to be of some use. For sure, something s going to start happening shortly. The darkness had not felt very far away in time.