| Clifford D.Simak. Way Station Original copyright year: 1963
Date of e-text: June 26, 1999
Prepared by: Anada Sucka 1
The noise was ended now. The smoke drifted like thin, gray wisps of fog
above the tortured earth and the shattered fences and the peach trees that
had been whittled into toothpicks by the cannon fire. For a moment silence,
if not peace, fell upon those few square miles of ground where just a while
before men had screamed and torn at one another in the frenzy of old hate
and had contended in an ancient striving and then had fallen apart,
exhausted.
For endless time, it seemed, there had been belching thunder rolling
from horizon to horizon and the gouted earth that had spouted in the sky and
the screams of horses and the hoarse bellowing of men; the whistling of
metal and the thud when the whistle ended; the flash of searing fire and the
brightness of the steel; the bravery of the colors snapping in the battle
wind.
Then it all had ended and there was a silence.
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