An excerpt from

Gelignite Jack
by Paul Davies

The blood rushing by his eardrums made a metred whooshing sound. The brush of his nylon sleeve against his jacket filled the air with tone and rhythm, like a ponderous chorus of strings in a concert hall. As he moved farther from the mine, over the succeeding hills and rises, the silence deepened further. He began to notice a hum in the air which he realized, with a start, was the electrical activity in his own brain.

Then, without thinking, he turned and looked for the train. Anyway, he thought he heard a train, a steam engine. At first casual gesture, like paying incidental notice to passersby in a shopping mall, the action aroused greater interest when, of course, there was no traint to be seen. He realized with amusement that it had been an aural hallucination. His subconscious mind could not tolerate the extreme silence, apparently, and had recovered a few decibels from the archives-whatever was at hand-to fill the gap.