A Signal Dropout...

If somebody could please tell me what happens on pages 537-538 of Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky, I would greatly appreciate it. My hardcover copy has shed those two pages. So there is a gap between:

For a moment the color of pain was all there was, squeezing out consciousness, fear, even startlement...

And:

...finally pounced. Thract looked out across the caldera at the pattern of smoking destruction...

If it weren't for the fact that I remember no gaps in page numbering, I would think it a clever act of meta-literature: the characters are, at that point in the narrative, experiencing massive acts of communications deception, spoofing, and dropouts themselves. So why not visit the same upon readers?...

Never play a game of lurk-and-pounce against a sentient race of spiders.