The Law of the Universe stated that
all life must create and die. Devil
Star defied the law--for did he not
know the dread secret of his birth?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
February 1951
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[illus]
<i>The story of Darkness has been told. Darkness, the dreamer who crossed
the immeasurable gulf of lightless emptiness between two universes.
He, an energy creature tens of millions of miles in girth, sought the
answer to life. Perhaps he found that answer in death, when he mated in
the thus-far inaccessible forty-eighth band of life.</i>
<i>And the story of Darkness' daughter Sun Destroyer has been told. She
plunged back along Darkness' trail to seek out that aged, sorrowing
being whose name was Oldster. For Oldster was wise. He had counselled
Darkness. Surely Oldster could lead Sun Destroyer to her life's
completion in the forty-ninth band of hyper-space. But there was no
forty-ninth band, unless it lay in Sun Destroyer's wild fantasies of
impossible happiness. She too died, yearning for her son Vanguard,
the infant purple light who lay helpless in the seventeenth band of
hyper-space.</i>
<i>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.</i>
<i>And this is the last story of the Darkness, the story of the purple
light named Devil Star.</i>
<tb>
Youth and play. Youth and that great yard of galaxies with the great
high fence of the darkness. Youth and the joys of living ... and the
deep-fluttering memory of his birth.
Into his ten-millionth year he never spoke of that memory. He kept it
cold and suffocating in an unplumbed chamber of his thought swirls.
Then it pressed upward in its wild escape.
"Moon Flame!"
His companion in the joyous race across that galaxy touched him briefly
with his visions.
"You spoke?"
"Yes! Moon Flame, listen to me. I must know something. Whether you--if
the others--if <i>they</i> remember. Remember the moment of birth! Remember
the mother--the dying father--<i>the band of life</i>--"
His aura quivered. 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!"