It had made a noise like God playing a Hammond organ...
And looked at me!
I don't know if seeing is even the same process in eyes like those. I doubt it. Maybe I was just a gray blur behind a black rock, with the plexi-reflected sky hurting its pupils. But it fixed on me. Perhaps the snake doesn't really paralyze the rabbit, perhaps it's just that rabbits are cowards by constitution. But it began to struggle and I still couldn't move, fascinated.
Fascinated by all that power, by those eyes, they found me there fifteen minutes later, a little broken about the head and shoulders, the Inject still unpushed.
And I dream about those eyes. I want to face them once more, even if their finding takes forever. I've got to know if there's something inside me that sets me apart from a rabbit, from notched plates of reflexes and instincts that always fall apart in exactly the same way whenever the proper combination is spun.
The Context: Carlton Davits is on Venus as part of an expedition to capture a Icthysaurus elasmognathus, “Ikky”. That passage is from an encounter that occurred before the events of the story. Davits found himself transfixed by the stare of the creature, and his failure to tranquilize it led to the failure of his mission and his personal ruin.
Why I like it: I do love a good story of redemption, and that's what appeals to me about the story, but I do dearly love the elegance of that quote, in particular, the bolded part.
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