Ross Rocklynne

“ You wish to create, to die. But now you will be unable to do either. Nor can you reach the band of decision, for you believe it lies within the forty-eighth band. Yes, you've changed—changed!"
Paralyzed, he hung in space, the resplendent mindless giants of the universe seeming to fling her words back in brassy echoes.
She began drifting away, her thoughts roaring into his thought swirls, tripled in volume and strident with their connotations. "Only green lights remember the moments of their birth, Devil Star! Else how could they know their way back to the forty-eighth band when the time came?" ”

“ He looked about him, peering into the darkness that would show him nothing. And suddenly he remembered that which he had seen in his inner being. The dark rebel, falling, falling, striking. The cataclysm that followed, the white light of explosion, the pell-mell exchange of suns. The rearrangement of desire.
And in full measure the meaning of that astounding event came. The thought hummed, swelled, until he was flinging it out beyond him in mocking wave after wave, into the face of that universe that had mocked him with its dead answers. ”

“ To Dark Fire, it made no difference. Her wisdom, her destroying hate, as with all green lights, must have its source in blind instinct. There had been outrage. He must die.
A cruel incisiveness claimed him as he dropped down the terraced spaces of the universe. Here and there, he plucked small suns from the heavens, converted them to seething energy. When she burst through after him into the second band of space, he was ready for her. All the quivering excess energy his swollen body held was channeled into a concentrated sword of destruction that smote her point-blank. ”

“ He strove not to read concern in the gaze of Moon Flame.
"I do not remember it," said Moon Flame slowly. "Birth? Death? Father? You speak in riddles, Devil Star. Come now, faster! I see the others in the galaxy beyond. Forget that silliness!"
For a clairvoyant second in his time-scale, the raging thoughts of Devil Star swelled. And subsided.
He flung himself into Moon Flame's path.
"You must listen," he said tensely. "We must all beware. For all of us will die!"
Moon Flame did not lessen his speed. "Die?"
"You do not understand, Moon Flame. Death is our destiny. ”

“ Tenderly, remembering the naming of her youngest, she renamed her oldest. "To us, you shall be known as Oldster."
She left him with his thoughts....
—I thought to master destiny. But destiny masters me. I cannot exclude the universe which continues to give me life.
—There is space, and there are stars, and of the things to know about them I have little to seek out. I have traveled the star-lanes for eons, filled with my longing, and the search for knowledge has only been the disguised search for my life's completion. ”

“ What old and new thoughts did those swinging "suns" evoke, what memories and dreams, in the slumbering conscious mind of that being who was called Oldster? Which configuration of "stars" and "galaxies" and what motion in and between them, called forth the haunting remembrances of Moon Flame, of Comet Glow and her twin child Dark Fire—of World Rim and the countless lost names of his unmeasured past?
Mind had mechanism. It could not be otherwise. And he inhabited, moved through, that band of decision. ”

“ Ah, you have made me live again—as Sun Destroyer—and Vanguard—"
"And it is of Vanguard we would speak." The thought vibrated in serene, lordly compassion against his thought swirls. "Now, you who were known as Devil Star, look upon us!"
Wave upon wave of horror engulfed him as that command drove in. He would not! The rebel thought endured only long enough to be swept away by the shattering failures of his life. He was not master. Not to fight, not to reach—ah, there would have lain happiness! ”

“ Between those star-systems were no dust-motes, no hurrying comets, no uncollected suns, no irregularity. There was dark, logical vacuum.
But suns, sometimes whole groups of suns, whirled sparkling across that vacuum from one spinning galaxy to another. That galaxy, in turn, urged another unit from its turning heart, or majestically rounded rim. The quiet, orderly exchange was magnificent to watch. The exchanged suns, or solar systems, quietly fell into new orbits that seemed prepared for them.
He moved quietly through this charmed universe, wondering about it. ”

“ But no. The universe decays, and draws life into decadence with it. There is no hope....
There was Darkness.
And Sun Destroyer.
And Vanguard.
And the millions, the tens of millions of years that passed.
With drudging energy, Oldster heaved his vast body into a ragged motion that took him for the last time across the flowing rivers of the sky, into the first deeps of the black gulf Darkness crossed. There, beyond sight of the universe, he drew his visions in about him.
He would sleep now. He would decay down to that moment when the centripetal urge for life would grow too feeble. ”

“ His thoughts dreamed on, and the strangely visible "galaxies" of his inner mind seemed to glitter their accord.
"The golden lights knew what you never knew, Darkness," he dreamed. "The answer to life itself. But even I, in these last moments, see some portion of that distant answer. Yes, Darkness! Life the rebel—the mighty force that combats the entropic gradient of the universe. ”

“ She was pouring the energy of her body into that beam, intent on eating through to the heart of him.
"You must die, Devil Star!" The mindless cacophony screamed at him. "You must die! You are in the band of life! And you must die!"
He spurred frantically back, but she followed. Desperately he felt that click in his mind which told him he was out of the forty-eighth band and into the forty-seventh. But she burst into that space after him—and the next and the next. ”

“ Frozen with horror, Devil Star—the bodiless entity of him—saw that sudden, senseless explosion, watched a hundred suns shot like vast bullets in a hundred flaming paths. Those suns plowed through nearby galaxies, drove relentlessly to new positions in other galactic accretions. The universe bubbled and seethed with irregularity. There were more explosions, more frantic exchanges. The universe was alight with flaming cores of brilliance. ”

“ The friendship of Dark Fire and Devil Star was truly done. For even when they were members of the same playing group, there was this cold thought: I am destined to die, and to die in a certain manner. I shall therefore turn destiny aside. I shall not die! ”

“ She too died, yearning for her son Vanguard, the infant purple light who lay helpless in the seventeenth band of hyper-space.
The story of Vanguard too has been told. He was renamed Yellow Light by his taunting playmates, because of imperfections in his central core. Physically disabled by his long stay in the seventeenth band, he was never to know happiness. Oldster, in his compassion and wisdom, led Vanguard to mate—to create and thus to die—for he knew Vanguard's true greatness, that he was destined to father a new race who would supplant the old. ”

“ Solar Cloud remained behind, bewilderedly searching for her. A wild excitement shook Devil Star. He must get closer. Solar Cloud knew nothing of a forty-eighth band, but surely the green light would somehow draw him into it. And Devil Star would inadvertently be drawn with him! ”

“ The universe was warped, curled, fighting its own irresistible stress and strain, stretching itself out of shape, discarding its own topological impossibilities into hidden pockets of space. A straight line was no less straight if warped by a gravitational field. ”

“ The sorrowing thoughts of Comet Glow came. "You are young. Live as life must live."
She pressed closer, laving him with her anxiety. "Do you seek to change the natal matrix of the vast universe? Ten thousand billion years ago—and perhaps even longer, Devil Star! ”

“ The pattern of play in this surging universe concerned the helter-skelter rearrangement of galaxies themselves. But Dark Fire often explored more novel avenues of play. Out of a nebula's heart she would come racing, trailing hot streams of excess energy—would circle him—dance—afire with some tremendous importance.
But that friendship was to end.
"Come, Devil Star, look what I've done!"
He saw the planet she had made, and marvelled. A planet whose surface crawled with beings made of solid matter. An incredible kind of actual life whose base was silicon—or carbon ”

“ And he stopped, faint with his knowledge of what she was and what she must be thinking deep in her mind. He must be cunning, strong, treacherous, too! He quivered with effort, laughed in the strange way that was possible for him. ”