Alone in the quivering brightness hung Devil Star. Not make use of knowledge? No result without cause? The thoughts tugged and tore. Into his mind came the drugging answer to all problems. He slept. And in his sleep, an insidious process began working, a selection and burying of the hated answers.
And when he awoke he knew, coldly secret within him, that he was exterior to the pattern—the rebel, the one who would revolt against destiny.
Somewhere in the passing millions of years, the senseless, joyous years of youth, his Mother vanished forever. He took small note of it. Comet Glow, too, faded into a forgotten darkness. Other names passed from the scene. And in from the wings, for reasons none questioned, came other, younger energy creatures....
... He played. And there was a green light, one of the twin siblings of Comet Glow, who played along with him.
Her name was Dark Fire, and sometimes, looking down into the black whirling cauldron of a sun-spot, he could see the same primeval excitement with movement that marked her.
He felt a wonderful sense of companionship with that green light, a tenderness, perhaps because he too had her taste for the unexpected. The pattern of play in this surging universe concerned the helter-skelter rearrangement of galaxies themselves. But Dark Fire often explored more novel avenues of play. Out of a nebula's heart she would come racing, trailing hot streams of excess energy—would circle him—dance—afire with some tremendous importance.
But that friendship was to end.
"Come, Devil Star, look what I've done!"
He saw the planet she had made, and marvelled. A planet whose surface crawled with beings made of solid matter. An incredible kind of actual life whose base was silicon—or carbon; he did not try to find out.