"From beyond the closed door of the room, a high-pitched humming was barely audible. It grew in volume, going up the scale. Terri leaped to his feet; and for the space of a couple of seconds, he lunged first this way then that, like a wild animal beating against its trap. Then, as if all will had at last gone out of him, he stopped in the middle of the room and closed his eyes. For a fraction of a moment he stood there, before a faint convulsion seized him and he fell."

Author Biography

Gordon Rupert Dickson (1923 - 2001) was a Canadian-American science fiction writer. He was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2000. John Clute has characterized Dickson as a "gregarious, engaging, genial, successful man of letters," who had not been an introvert. Clute considers Dickson a science fiction romantic. Nevertheless, Clute stresses in connection to Dickson that science fiction welcomes "images of heightened solitude, romantically vague, limitless landscapes and an anguished submission to afflatus," due to its origin in Gothic fiction.