He started to speak and glanced over at her. He saw that she had not finished the drink she was carrying. That was unusual, since Myra was close to being an alcoholic—something he encouraged in her. He decided to say nothing.

“I lost those feelings when I got older,” she went on. “But lately I’ve been getting them back. Stronger. And the grass, singing like that, seems to encourage it.” She stopped for a minute. “You know,” she said, “the grass is giving me the same feeling. That something on the other side of knowledge can really be known. If we could only… only relax somehow and clear our minds and grasp it.”

Edward’s voice was cool. “You can get the same effect from two martinis on an empty stomach.”

She was unperturbed. “No, you can’t, Edward,” she said. “You cannot.”

***

They were silent again for several miles. Past the plant the road broadened for a while and became straighter. Edward speeded up. It was late and he was getting bored. The grass’s singing had become quieter. He was focusing on the road when he heard a sharp intake of breath from Myra and then he saw that somehow there was more light on the road. And Myra said softly, “The rings, Edward,” and he looked up and there they were: the lavender and pale blue rings of Belsin. Normally invisible but now glowing in a great arc from east to west above them. Fairy rings. Rings of heaven.

The grass seemed to crescendo for a moment, in some kind of coda, and then became silent. The rings brightened. The effect was stunning.

“Stop the jeep,” Myra said. “Let’s look.”

“Haven’t time,” Edward said, and drove on.

And Myra did something she had never done before because of the pain her unlucky body could cause her: she pushed the lever on her seat and leaned in it all the way back and looked up at the beautiful rings in the sky. She did it with care and lay back and relaxed, still holding her unfinished drink, now in her lap. Her dark hair blew behind her in the jeep’s wind. Edward could see by the light of the rings that her face was glowing. Her body looked light, supple, youthful in the light. Her smile was beatific.

He noticed the unfinished drink. “God,” he thought, “she may be getting well.”

***

The orchids grew down the sides of the only cliffs on Belsin. Belsin was a nearly flat planet with almost nothing to fall from. That, and the low gravity, made it a very safe place, as Edward had noted early in his life there.

The orchids were not orchids, were not even plants, but they looked somewhat like orchids. They were the outward flowerings of some obscure life form that, like the grass, seemed to go down to the center of the planet. You could not uproot an orchid any more than you could pull a blade of the grass loose from the surface; a thin but incredibly tenuous filament at the base of each of them went through solid obsidian down to a depth far below possible exploration or investigation. They were stunningly beautiful to see.