He stands in line, holding his survival bag in one hand and his pressurization helmet in the other. The sleek, silvery craft looms before him like a long-forgotten god, indifferent to the little men who are sacrificed to it.

He will be one of the first.

He is a scientist, a captain in the navy of the new interplanetary government. He was chosen from a pool of thousands, ecstatic believers in the Glory of Progress. He will be in the first seat back from the automated cabin, to the left of the aisle. Thirteen others will be behind him.

Silently, they board. They are all, by nature, serious men, made more so by sobering circumstance. They will brave the unknown, led by a machine more intelligent than a thousand of their kind.

The ship rises almost silently from its dock; these men and their compatriots long ago solved the mysteries of attraction and repulsion.

For three hours the craft rises, casting atmosphere aside like an old garment. Nuclear engines press the fourteen men ever upward, ever onward, past the warm green earth and its cold grey moon. Half a million miles in three hours. Still not fast enough.

The fourteen men--and their fuzzy-logic mother figure--pursue a more primal grail than gravity or repulsion. They seek the secret of speed, true speed, the speed of light, godspeed.

The man is nervous, but he does not speak. None of them speaks.

The man fears the unknown, but he fears the known much more. He fears what may lay beyond the silver void, but he also fears transistors and rivets and O-rings. He fears what is known; common knowledge terrifies him.

Assumption is the name of the demon of mankind. What we know, we assume we will always know. The man is secure in the knowledge that the designers of the craft were secure in their knowledge. He knows they did not check everything.

What could go wrong? The spacecraft is the pinnacle of technology, and technology is the great shining altar upon which the soul of the world rests. O Lord, for these microchips we have received, may we be truly thankful …

The craft and the little men have left the cradle in which they were reared. The silicon fertility-goddess decides that the time for fate has arrived. Switches are thrown, circuits closed. Barely-controlled meltdown …

Speed.

Faster, faster, leaving behind knowledge and power. The hull glistens as suicidal molecules impact, as if intent on keeping the foolish children in their little playground. Faster, faster, the universe recedes, and the man enters the nowhere beyond light.

They are at the mercy of fragile physics, and the things that dwell therein.

Here there be (slickslidewetbright shadows of) tygers.

Consorting with darkness, he, who sought to illuminate the world. Knowledge was his lover, and yet here he is, in the place in which nothing can be learned.

The cabin and his thirteen companions have disappeared, consumed in the Advent of Shade and Black. Nothing remains except the memories of electric synapse-fire. Man is nothing, man is all … dog, god …

Light and darkness, black and white. Man's true name is Chiaroscuro, the lick of flame on wet velvet, the dance of positive and negative. Gaze into the abyss, and it sees you on the mountain.

Chiaroscuro, we leave you behind. The man sees what waits outside the demesnes of the Shining Path. The man is a shadow, the bastard of darkness and light. When the light is removed, the shadow is swallowed by its own ebon skin.

He struggles to grasp the last thread of hope, the final trailing whisper of brightness. He fails, and his cold father holds him close. Shade-man, dog of darkness, now you know Hell.