The gold began to fade, gathering the diamond shards of color into itself, lightening, paling. Newton became aware of a glow ahead, more terrible than all the fires he had yet seen — a supernal whiteness so searing in its intensity that even his new senses found it hard to bear.
The patterned energy of his flame-like body was shaken by waves of awful force. He had been afraid before. Now he was beyond fear. He crept after Thardis like a child creeping to the feet of Creation. He would have stopped but Thardis led him on into the inmost solar furnace, into the living heart of the Sun.
And he who had been Philip Carlin was there, wrapped in a silent awe, watching the mystic terrible forges beating out the unthinkable energies of the death and renascence of matter.
Newton had no thought for Carlin now. The awful voices of creation were hammering against his senses, dazing them, numbing them. He shuddered beneath that godlike fury of sound. The stripped and fleeing atoms burst through him, filling him with an exalted pain. He too watched, lost utterly in a cosmic awe of his own.
Atomic change exploded ceaselessly here, thundering, throbbing — hydrogen flashing through all the shifting transformations of the carbon-nitrogen cycle to final helium, the residual energy bursting blindly outward in raving power.
Newton began to be aware of his own danger. He knew that if he stayed too long he would never go again. He was a scientist and this was the ultimate core of learning. He would remain, drunk and fascinated with the lure of knowledge, with the incredible life that could exist in this crucible of energy. He would remain forever, with the other Children of the Sun.
Temptation whispered, “Why go back? Why not remain, a clean, eternal flame, free to learn, free to live?”
He remembered the three who waited for him in the citadel and the promise he had made. And he forced himself with a bitter effort to speak. “Carlin! Philip Carlin!”
The other Sun Child stirred, and asked, “Who calls?”
And when he heard his rapt mind woke to emotion. “Curt Newton? You here? I had almost forgotten.”