Word: vaporously
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...conventional "visible" light, in the range of the human eye, or higher-frequency ultraviolet radiation, X rays and gamma rays. IRAS, by contrast, operates at the other end of the electromagnetic spectrum: it "sees" in the dark by detecting the long waves of infrared radiation, or heat. Since water vapor in the earth's atmosphere soaks up most infrared radiation from space, such observations until now could only be made in a limited way from aircraft, balloons or extremely high-altitude observatories...
...invaders had made a bonfire, enjoyed it for a time, then doused it. A puddle still trickled from the center of the pyre: a transparent spiral of vapor curled out of its flank. The dead books reeked of ruin, flame, animal hides, a fetid steaminess. In the streets creatures like centaurs scuttled and scrabbled, flinging their rods, sticks, rocks, poles, Metamorphosis and shock...
...emaciated like her husband, had her own bogeymen?strangers with X-ray vision outside the draped bedroom window?and she hid from them in the closet. The couple's paranoia was fleetingly sliced away, of course, as soon as they got high: they "free-based," breathing a distilled cocaine vapor, Phil alone all night with his glass water pipe and thimble of coke, Rita in another room with hers. In the mornings, Phil and Rita got back together, down on all fours, scratching and picking at the carpet for any stray grains of coke...
Free-basers are apparently the likeliest to die. The high is more intense than the high from snorting (and equal to that from injection) because the pure, heated cocaine vapor is absorbed into the bloodstream so fast. The speed of absorption, not the size of the dose, also seems to be the operative factor in cocaine deaths. Blood vessels are simultaneously constricted and cardiopulmonary muscles overstimulated; heart attacks (sometimes not diagnosed as cocaine-triggered) or lung failure are the direct causes of death...
...user inhales the vapor and, in seconds, gets an orgasmic jolt. The sensation costs $20, begins fading after a minute and is gone within ten minutes...