Ross Rocklynne - People of the Darkness

“Devil Star, there will be no choice!”

The clangor of that voice from the past had no meaning for him, though frantically he tried to examine it. But meanings, reasons, coherent thinking, were lost to him. As Dark Fire drifted nearer, he was enclosed in vast peace. He knew at once that his searching, even his finding, was a patchwork substitute for this great longing that had been built into the very fabric of him.

Now came the voice of Dark Fire, humming, insidious. “Devil Star, our moment has come, as we knew it would. Devil Star, follow me!”

And now he hangs in the vibrant band of life, drawn there half by her will, half by his. He trembles with the half-memory of death, and yet is bathed by the hypnotic vibrations flooding from the central light of her, so that he knows peace and understands the answers to all questions.

She is dwindling. He knows what he must do.

As she would destroy me!

The thought rages, but he prepares.

Then hiatus : the gulf of timelessness between two instants of time. He is there, by a mechanism he does not understand. There has been a click deep in the lower caverns of his thought swirls — as if he has transported himself to another band of hyperspace.

But is this another hyperspace? It cannot be. In that ladder of universes, and he has climbed it from lower to topmost rung, there is nothing similar .

He views this strange space with childish wonder , knowing that he is here, and yet is without a body, without a purple central light. He knows, too, that actually he must be in the forty-eighth band of hyperspace, about to die, and at peace.

He is there — and here. Fantasy or reality? It does not matter. It comes to him, in wonder gentle as light scattering, that here is an importance he might never comprehend.

A queer, geometric, somehow logical universe. Yes, the idea of logic presses insistently in. And yet what he views does not seem outwardly logical. For these clean-cut star systems, though surely vast distances stretch between them, seem equally large to his sight. They lie, he reasons, on a four-dimensional skin, stretched out and pasted upon it. There is distance… but no perspective.

Between those star systems are no dust motes, no hurrying comets, no uncollected suns, no irregularity. There is dark vacuum, pure, logical vacuum.

But suns, sometimes whole groups of suns, whirl sparkling across that vacuous space from one spinning galaxy to another. That galaxy, in turn, urges another unit from its turning heart or its majestically rounded rim. The quiet orderly exchange-exchange is magnificent to watch. The new suns, or solar systems, quietly fall into new orbits that seem prepared for them. There is a shiver and dance of movement as the other members of the receiving system move obligingly about to make room.

He moves quietly through this charmed universe — the bodiless entity of him — wondering about it, speculating. How quiet, how at peace, how right. And then, as he hangs motionless again in dark vacuum, he sees a single, glowing sun detach itself from the rounding rim of the nearest galaxy. It speeds toward him — and is closer. Yet he will not move. The distance lessens. It is upon him and passing through him.

For a burning moment he is locked in its fiery heart, and all of being blazes with hurt.

Surging against his pain, he fights his way out, and speeds away rotating and looking back, bewildered. The speeding sun has faltered in its flight and is hanging motionless. The entire universe quivers and blurs, as if in response to some discord. Then the sun reverses direction, reluctantly falling back into its parent star system.

And the system explodes!

Frozen with stark horror, Devil Star sees that sudden, senseless explosion. He watches a hundred suns shoot like streaming bullets in a dozen directions. Those suns plow through nearby galaxies. They drive relentlessly to new positions in other galactic accretions. The universe surges and bubbles and seethes with irregularity. There are more explosions and more frantic exchanges. The heavens are alight with flaming tongues of corrupted matter. There is an urgent hustle and bustle.

Then the exchanged suns begin to find their niches without commotion. The number of explosions lessens. The firmament ceases its horrifying agitation. Order is restored. The orderly suns, sometimes with attendant planets, march quietly across the dark sky.

Now the configuration of this strange sky is different.

Numbly, Devil Star hardly dares to move. Then a clamor rises in him. There is something he must do. He is repelled by his need, and does not know why he is repelled. From that strange, dimensionless distance he sees a sun moving toward him. He rushes to meet it. Again that prolonged, fiery moment of agony.

And that universe, that industrious universe with its lawless logic, that universe is gone.

Devil Star is back in the forty-eighth band, watching Dark Fire.

The moment of watching was drawn out.

“Devil Star!” The cry blasted across space, imperative, but in the substrata of that cry was unspeakable horror.

Faintly Devil Star answered: “No.”

The brightening green flames of Dark Fire’s central light wavered, dimmed, brightened again. He felt the wave upon wave of hypnotic compulsion washing over him. But he only felt an answering deadness in the depths of his thought swirls.

She came across the spaces, looming, rushing, trailing chaotic streams of energy along her weaving path. She was upon him before he understood what was happening. Her speechless rage and hate preceded her. Astounded, he felt a searing burst of pain deep in the energy fields of his complex body, and saw that a flaming red beam of force had leaped from her. Vainly he tried to beat it off with screening forces. The beam seared through. She was pouring the energy of her vast body into that beam, intent on eating through to the heart of him.

“You must die, Devil Star!” The mindless cacophony screamed, ripping, filling the universe with its throbbing hate.

“You must die! You are in the band of life! And you must die!”

Numbed beyond thought, he only spurred back, intent on outdistancing her. She, a demon bent on destroying him, followed. Desperately he clicked himself from the band of life and into the forty-seventh band. And she burst into that space after him — and into the next and the next.

As he fled, working only on instinct and the dazed horror that fed him, a chilling, mountainous certainty rose. The laws of life as he knew them had been violated. No matter that he had triumphed, in some obscure, staggering way that he could not yet comprehend. 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 frantically dropped down the terraced spaces of the universe. Here and there as he fled, he plucked small suns from the heavens, swept scattered debris into his body, and converted it all to primal energy. When she burst through after him into the eleventh band, he was ready for her. All the quivering excess energy his swollen body held was channeled into a concentrated bolt of destruction that smote her point-blank.

Shaken even beyond horror, he saw those clouds of fuming light that exploded from the core of her.

She hung without motion, lax, her visions down, a sickly pale radiance creeping in shadowy waves through her. Across her central green light fitful waves of yellow surged. And then the force fields that made her body a coherent unit lost their function. Involuntary expansion started.