Instantly he tore from her restraining bands of energy. "You say that," he cried, "who saw me, an unmatured purple light, in the band of life! Who knows that I have a memory which carries me to the moment of my own birth!"
And he stopped, chilled by her odd, pitying silence, by the dread answer she seemed to be giving him. Another thought rose clamoring. Green lights are—different. They have a cruel, natural wisdom purple lights cannot hope to possess.
And, mockingly, that ruinous other-thought: They?
He was sinking into his dreadful abyss.
"Devil Star." The sorrowing thoughts of Comet Glow came. "You are young. Live as life must live."
She pressed closer, laving him with her anxiety. "Do you seek to change the natal matrix of the vast universe? Ten thousand billion years ago—and perhaps even longer, Devil Star! The pattern of all that is was foreordained—and all that will be! No electron that moved along its path but what moved in response to a prior event.
"There has been no thought—and shall be none—that was not caused by a prior thought.
"No result without cause. And no event without result!"
His words came out of the tortured depths of him. "I was in the band of life. And it was against the pattern. There was no reason for it—no reason!"
"Yes," she whispered sadly. "There was a reason. And if you persist in searching for that reason, you will surely have further proof of the shackles destiny binds us with."