"I had picked the yellow one for the strongest. He appeared to be so. Yet he failed, and you others fought through."
Avery stared at Falken with the dawn of an appalled realization in his amber eyes. Falken asked of the light:
"What are you?"
The floating fire dipped and swirled. Preening peacock tints rippled through it, to be drowned in fierce, proud scarlet. It said:
"I am a child of the Sun."
It watched them gape in stunned amazement, and laughed with mocking golden notes.
"I will tell you, humans. It will amuse me to have an audience not of my own creating. Watch!"
A slab of the glassy rock took form before them. Deep in it, a spot of brilliance grew.
It was a Sun, in the first blaze of its virile youth. It strode the path of its galactic orbit alone. Then, from the wheeling depths of space, a second Sun approached.