"You do not understand, Moon Flame. Death is our destiny. It was
destined long before we were born."
Moon Flame stared. "Then if this strange thing is destined, no one can
win against it."
"No one?" Devil Star swerved in his backward flight, brushing the
violet furnace of a super-sun. He said, "I shall win, Moon Flame. I
shall fight death--the death green lights will attempt to give us. I
shall interrupt destiny. I shall be its master!"
But Moon Flame did not understand. He brushed Devil Star aside with
an impatient tractor ray. With a scornful glance backward, he went
shooting off leaving Devil Star caught in a wake of incandescent sparks.
Devil Star stared after him, but all he saw was the immortal blaze of
his life's years.
He was the rebel. He would not die!
<tb>
Devil Star had five million more years of peace, of caniptious play.
And then....
He was alone, and cradling his loneliness, atop a galaxy shaped like
a masterfully blown, brimming wine-glass, with the bubbles of stars
clouding about its rim. The moment of his curse had come, for a vast
cunning had grown in him. He would lie here, shielded by a giant star,
and he would wait.
The waiting was not long. Came the beat of a life force. He felt
himself tremble. Deep inside something was whispering that he should
forget, turn back--play--skim along the surface of life as did Moon
Flame and the other energy children. Accept destiny!
Destiny! The cunning shift and quiver of sub-atomic particles that
began when the universe began.
He would not.
The life force pressed in, strengthened. And with a thread of vision he
saw a matured green light, her central core burning with an hypnotic,
frightening radiance.
Devil Star surged up closer to the star that shielded him, for now
he sensed the swirl and pulse of another life. With a thinned ray of
sight, he beheld the purple light ripping through space toward the
deadly source of the vibration that drew him.
For one chaotic moment, Devil Star's purpose was as nothing. He knew
this energy creature.
"Solar Cloud!"
His cry of warning blasted through space. He expanded to normal, came
into full view of green and purple light. But neither heard his cry.
They could not--would not--see or hear him. They were caught on that
barbed law from which the mere interference of a Devil Star could not
set them free. They hung motionless in space, the huge green light
languidly rotating, the slightly smaller purple light, Solar Cloud,
staring at her in hard, bright wonder. And Devil Star knew that they
were speaking along such tight bands of energy he could not hear what
they said.
"Solar Cloud," he whispered, "stop!"
And then reaction. The full knowledge of his ultimate triumph came to
him. Solar Cloud would die. But Devil Star would live--would grow old
beyond death.
At once he was transformed back into a creature of cunning.
The green light disappeared into a hyper-space. The purple light
appeared bewildered. Then he too disappeared, and Devil Star, bitterly
frightened that already he had lost them, felt the click in his thought
swirls which transported him into the second band of the universe's
forty-eight faces. Here was cosmos in wild, disordered motion. Spasms
of pain ripped through Devil Star as eating vibrations impinged on
him. For a nickering moment he allowed himself to wonder at the reason
behind that amok universe. Causeless?
Nothing without cause!
Or was there?
He flicked into the next band, following green and purple light
upward until around them were those cubed celestial bodies of the
forty-seventh band.
The green light vanished.
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!
And, subtly, he knew why he must follow. There was the memory--the
damning memory of his birth--and he must know if it was memory, or a
phantasm without meaning in fact.
He moved closer to Solar Cloud ... and, abruptly, felt himself swept
along in some giant tide. He had his moment of surprise before his
consciousness momentarily blurred.
Then, sharply, he was aware.
His visions darted out, contracted. The full knowledge of where he was
smote him. Crystalline tongues of fire quivered from his contracting
body. He knew he had done an impossible thing.
He, unmatured, was in the forty-eighth band.
<tb>
Time passed, the great, vital pulses of time, flowing like an unseen
river through that band where life was born. Devil Star watched numbly,
without horror, triumph, feeling.
He saw that mating of green and purple light as their central cores met
in annihilating fusion.
He saw the grayness of coming death settle over Solar Cloud.
He drifted into a torpor, saw the pulsing white ball which heralded
life, and saw nothing there. The moment was relived. The memory had
been there.
Then, all that was gone. Against his will, he had been moved to the
first band in true space.
His thoughts did not function. He hung in a box of emptiness between
two stars, unable to plumb the depths of that staggering event.
Solar Cloud was dead, or dying.
As he, Devil Star, was destined to die.
Now the thoughts did start. An incredible thing had happened. Where had
it begun? Ten thousand billion years ago? Or--a mere fragment of time
away to that moment when Devil Star was born?
His thoughts took their upward surge. As full awareness came back, he
felt a shock of knowledge.
He was being watched, and it was the green light, she who had conceived
a life and heartlessly destroyed one, who was watching. A sudden
cunning hate took hold of him. He held her stare, flung it back
arrogantly. And she watched him with coldness from the eminence of her
greater size.
She said chillingly, "I saw you there. And it was not meant to be. Will
you forget?"
"Forget?" The cry was shocked from him. "You are begging me to forget,
Comet Glow?"
And as he mockingly uttered her name, she drew back, a darkness
creeping into the brilliant depths of her. Slowly: "If that is the word
you wish to use, yes."
He surged closer to her. "It <i>is</i> the word, Mother of four children!
Then let me also forget the arts of existence--the eating of energy,
the dispelling of it--the use of my para-propellents. I would as soon
forget them. And let me also forget the dread moment of my birth!"
And he knew what effect that had on her, for he had told none but Moon
Flame. Involuntarily she expanded, looked at him with dawning horror.
"Remember--that?" The words were torn from her.
"I remember it. And I will not forget," and he was gone from her sight
into another band of hyper-space. But she followed, reaching out with
tight bands of energy, holding him fast, and yet at a distance.
"Devil Star!" The words came faintly. "What is it you search for?"
She was debasing herself, she, a green light, millions of years older
than he. And he knew his moment of gloating should be put aside. He was
young. There was much knowledge to be had.
"I am searching for--" He stopped. For what? A restless quiver of
sparks leapt from him. "Comet Glow, perhaps I am seeking to be master
of my own fate."
<tb>
For long and long her somber gaze rested on him. "Devil Star, it is not
possible."
Instantly he tore from her restraining bands of energy. "You say that,"
he cried, "who saw me, an unmatured purple light, in the band of life!
Who knows that I have a memory which carries me to the moment of my own
birth!"
And he stopped, chilled by her odd, pitying silence, by the dread
answer she seemed to be giving him. Another thought rose clamoring.
Green lights are--different. They have a cruel, natural wisdom purple
lights cannot hope to possess.