, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise
"The universe is big. Really big. Our planet is just one of eight in orbit around our sun. Which itself is hardly special, being one of about two hundred billion stars in a vast spiral. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, it’s so big, some days I find it hard to comprehend. But even the Milky Way is just a tiny drop in the cosmic ocean. Just one of one hundred billion galaxies, formed into an enormous web, stretching away in all directions."