Ross Rocklynne - People of the Darkness

And for him, now, was the time of glory.

For that particle, that sun, was himself, as all these turning, studious galaxies were himself, the mind and the soul of him. What need to cleave space, to endure torture, to question himself now? Why question the manner in which he, Devil Star, had been given access to this glory that lay under his supposedly conscious self? The golden-lights knew. The minds of the golden-lights, though, were wrapped in a spiritual blaze beyond his comprehension for eternity. Let it be so.

His thoughts rolled on, growing rich within him as that portentous falling sun hurled itself along its returning path.

“Darkness — Sun Destroyer — Vanguard,” he whispered. “Rebels all. And Devil Star! Where are those who followed the worn paths? But you, Darkness, you, Sun Destroyer, you, Vanguard” — almost he could see the shadowy pained shapes of them beckoning to him from a past beyond recall — “have we not created as no other energy creature created? For there are the golden-lights.”

His thoughts dreamed on; the strangely visible constructions of his inner mind seemed to glitter their accord.

“The golden-lights know what you never knew,” he dreamed. “The answer to life itself. But even I, in these last moments, see a portion of that distant answer. Yes, Darkness! Life the rebel — the mighty force that combats the entropic gradient of the universe. Let the universe slope down, but life eternally moves upward, building on its own discarded forms. And life will rebuild all that is.

“Were we ourselves not changelings, mutants with strange powers? And it was the dark rebel within us that made us so! The dark rebel, that moves as it will.”

Piercing through to him from some outer circle of being came shrill warning. He ignored it. Let the surface awareness of him thrash about, in terror of that which was to happen. He would not return to it. He was here, his bodiless entity, watching life function in dauntless disobedience to the laws lifeless destiny laid down.

That glowing particle, that was himself as well, was far down into its parent system, moving swiftly along the path it had chosen for itself. Now, because of this choice, would come the rearrangement of this vast webwork around him. New thoughts, different outlooks, and volition that thwarted destiny. For destiny ruled that a purple-light must die in one certain manner.

Destiny could not rule life’s dark rebel.

Again the warning, the clamorous scream to return, to fight. He would have none of it. He felt a tender pity for that being whose mere awareness was obedient to what the stresses and strains of his vast body demanded. He would not return.

The dark rebel struck.

In the timeless moment of its striking all space seemed to still. And the clamoring thoughts of Oldster, that aged being, stilled as well. His animal struggles ceased. Alone in his mausoleum of darkness, he was filled with a pulsing wonder. He felt the forcefields girding his great body together losing their prime binding energy.

And then expansion.

The chill of horror returned to him. “I am dying,” he whispered. And that horror was abruptly gone. He looked about him, peering into the darkness that would show him nothing. Then he remembered that which he had seen in his inner being. The dark rebel falling, aimed true and striking. The cataclysm that followed, the white puffing rings of concentric 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 and swelled, until he was flinging it out beyond him in mocking wave upon wave, into the face of that universe which had mocked him with its dead answers. In this last moment of expansion, the pain and formless searching of his years vanished in the ultimate triumph. He had had choice between two events, that of being and that of not-being. Without intervention he had chosen. He was content. It was the time of glory.

The Star Kings — Edmond Hamilton

Metropolis — Thea von Harbou

Rat in the Skull & Other Off-Trail Science Fiction — Rog Philllips

The Involuntary Immortals — Rog Phillips

The House on the Borderland — William Hope Hodgson

The Interplanetary Huntress — Arthur K. Barnes

The Interplanetary Huntress Returns — Arthur K. Barnes

Future Eves: Classic Science Fiction About Women by Women — (ed) Jean Marie Stine

A Martian Odyssey — Stanley G. Weinbaum

Women of Wood & Other Stories — A. Merritt

This Island Earth — Raymond F. Jones

Ki-Gor, Lord of the Jungle — John Peter Drummond

Scout — Otavio Ramos, Jr.

Tarzan of the Apes — Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Return of Tarzan — Edgar Rice Burroughs

Copyright 1973 by Ross L. Rocklin

Reprinted by permission of the Ackerman Agency.

“Into the Darkness,” Astonishing Stories , June, 1940; Copyright 1940 by Fictioneers, Inc.; Copyright 1968 by Ross L. Rocklin.

“Abyss of Darkness,” Astonishing Stories , December. 1942; Copyright 1942 by Fictioneers, Inc.; Copyright 1970 by Ross L. Rocklin.

“Daughter of Darkness,” Astonishing Stories , November, 1941; Copyright 1941 by Fictioneers, Inc.; Copyright 1969 by Ross L. Rocklin.

“Rebel of the Darkness,” (as “Revolt of the Devil Star”) Imagination , February, 1951; Copyright 1950 by Greenleaf Publishing Co.

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