How many extraordinary phenomena like this, so foreign to human comprehension, might lie concealed in space? Do we need to travel everywhere bringing… - Stanisław Lem

General Apollon Diaz was currently in power and leaned toward the position of the hawks, which was to meet force with force. The proposal had already been made at Parliament (which stood in permanent emergency session) to counterattack: to pull twice the number of teeth from the political prisoners the abductors were demanding and mail them poste restante, as the address of guerrilla headquarters was unknown.

Is a mountain a very large rock? Is a planet a huge mountain? These terms can be used, but the new scale of magnitude brings with it new regularities and new phenomena.

It was not that the ocean depths served the creatures there with darkness, to protect them from attack — a darkness they could light, as they needed, with luminescence — but vice versa: the darkness gave rise to those that were pressure-resistant and could illuminate themselves.