The mini-theme of the lighter's motion continues. Nostromo, who has already given
up the external world in favor of "sheer desperation," wants to stop
and use the darkness as protection, i.e., surrender wholly to subjectivity. The
suggestion has a powerful effect on Decoud, who apparently leaps to his feet,
his mood of contentment shattered. Stripped again of the objective reference that
motion conferred, his mind plunges into a kind of panicked, timeless subjectivity:
a string of memories (all within "the space of a second") so vivid that
Nostromo has to physically shake him out of it.