Over the last few generations, we military types have done our little desecrations around the edges of the Dark. But Unnerby’s team will see the center of the Deepest Dark. What can that really be like? Yes, we think we know: the frozen air, the vacuum. But that’s all guesses. I’m not religious, Colonel Smith, but … I wonder at what they may find.’ Religious or not, all the ancient superstitions of snow-trolls and earth angels seemed to hover just behind the general’s words. Even the most rational quailed before the thought of a Dark so intense that in a sense the world did not exist.
