ight's work at the
observatory. With a peculiar impatience he waited for eleven o'clock, the
time the House of Higher Music had appointed for the transmission of the
symphony.
The electro-smelting operator undertook the role of Master of
Ceremonies and seated Darr Veter and other music lovers in the focus of the
hemispherical screen and opposite the sound reproducer in the music room.
She turned out the lights, explaining that with them on it would be
difficult to follow the colour scheme of the symphony that could only be
properly performed in a special hall and must, in this transmission, of
necessity be confined to the limits of the screen.
The screen flickered faintly in the darkness and the noise of the sea
could just be heard. Somewhere, incredibly far away, a low note sounded, a
note so rich in tone that it seemed almost tangible. It grew in volume,
shattering the room and the hearts of the listeners and then suddenly became
softer, rose to a higher note and was broken and scattered in a million
crystal fragments. Tiny orange sparks appeared in the dark atmosphere. It
was like that flash of primordial lightning whose discharge on Earth,
millions of centuries ago, had fused simple carbon compounds to form the
more intricate molecules, the basis of organic matter and life.
A wave of alarming and dissonant sounds flooded the room, a
thousand-voiced chorus of will-power, yearning and despair to complement
which vague shadows of purple and vermillion came in hurried flashes and
died away again.
In the movement of the short and strongly vibrant notes a circular
arrangement could be felt and was accompanied by' an irregular spiral of
whirling grey fire in the heights. Suddenly the whirling chorus of sounds
was severed by long notes, proud and resonant, filled with impetuous force.
The vague fiery outlines of space were pierced by clear lines of blue
fiery arrows that flew into the bottomless void beyond the edges of the
spiral and were drowned in the darkness of horror and silence.
Darkness and silence-on this note ended the first movement of the
symphony.
The audience, slightly staggered, did not have time to pronounce a
single word before the music began again. Extensive cascades of powerful
sounds were accompanied by dazzling opalescences that covered the whole
spectrum;
they fell, weakening as they grew lower, and glowing fire died away to
their melancholy rhythm. Again something narrow and vehement broke through
the falling cascades and again blue lights began their rhythmic, dancing
ascent.
Astounded, Darr Veter caught in the blue sounds an urge towards ever
more complicated rhythms and forms and thought that the primitive struggle
of life against entropy could not be better expressed. Steps, dams, filters
holding back the cascades that were falling to lower levels of energy ....
To retain them for one moment and in that moment to live! So, so and
so-there they were, those first splashes of the complicated organization of
matter.
Blue arrows resolved into a round dance of geometric figures, crystal
and lattice forms that grew more complicated to the accompaniment of various
combinations of minor tercets, fell apart, were again combined and then
suddenly dissolved in the grey twilight.
The third movement began with the measured tread of bass notes in time
with which blue lanterns were lit and extinguished as they moved off into
the void of infinite space and time. The surge of tramping basses increased,
their rhythm grew faster until they merged into a broken, ominous melody.
The blue lights were like flowers swaying on thin stems of fire-they bowed
their heads sadly under the flood of low, thundering and blasting notes and
were extinguished in the distance. But the lines of lights or lanterns
became denser and their stems were thicker. Then two fiery strips marked a
road leading into immeasurable blackness and the resonant golden voices of
life floated into the immenseness of the Universe, warming fcwith a glorious
warmth gloomy, indifferent, ever-moving [patter. The dark road changed to a
river, a gigantic stream f blue flames in which splashes of multicoloured
fire made K pattern that was constantly changing and becoming more
Intricate.
! The higher combinations of rounded, regular curves and spherical
surfaces were of a beauty equal to that of "the contradictory quartal
chords, in the succession of which a complicated resonant melody increased
rapidly, whirling more powerfully and expansively in the rhythmical advance
of the low rumble of time.
Darr Veter's head was in a whirl and he could no longer follow all the
shades of music and colour and was able to grasp only the general outline of
the gigantic idea. The blue ocean of high notes, pure as crystal, glowed
with a beaming, unusually powerful, joyful and clear colour. The tone rose
higher and higher and the melody itself began rotating furiously in an
ascending spiral until it broke off in flight, in a blinding flash of fire.
The symphony was over and Darr Veter realized what lie had been missing
all these long months. He needed work that was closer to the Cosmos, closer
to the tirelessly unwinding spiral of human urge forward into the future. He
went straight from the music room to the telephone room and from there
called the Central Employment Bureau of the northern living zone. The young
clerk who had sent him to work in the mines was pleased when he recognized
him.
"They called for you from the Astronautical Council this morning," he
said, "but I could not get in touch with you. I'll put you through now."
The screen grew blank and then the light came on again and Mir Ohm, the
senior of the four secretaries of the Council, appeared. His face wore a
very serious look and, Darr Veter thought, a look mingled with sadness.
"There has been a great catastrophe! Satellite 57 has perished! The
Council is calling you for a most difficult job. I'll send an ion-powered
planetship for you. Be ready to leave!"
Darr Veter stood motionless in amazement in front of the already empty
screen.
CHAPTER EIGHT. RED WAVES
The wide verandah of the observatory was open to the winds that brought
the perfume of flowering plants from the hot African cost across the sea, a
perfume that aroused an urgent yearning in a man's soul. Mven Mass could not
compose himself into the state of clarity and firmness, when no doubts
remained, that was essential on the eve of a decisive experiment. Renn Bose
had reported from Tibet that the Corr Yule installation had been
reconstructed and was ready. The four observers on Satellite 57 had
willingly agreed to risk their lives if that would help in carrying out an
experiment such as Earth had never before known.
The experiment, however, was being mounted without the permission of
the Council and without an extensive preliminary discussion of all
possibilities. This made it seem like the secret manufacture of weapons in
the darkest eras of man's history and gave it a flavour of cowardly secrecy
not common to people of today.
It is true that the great objective they hoped to reach Seemed to
justify the means, but... they had to remain pure in spirit! The old human
conflict between the end and the means of its attainment had arisen: and the
experience of thousands of generations teaches mankind that there is a
certain boundary limiting the means to an end that must not be overstepped.
The case of Beth Lohn gave the African no rest. Thirty-two years
before, one of Earth's leading mathematicians, Beth Lohn, had discovered
that certain signs of displacement in the interaction of strong power fields
could be explained by the existence of parallel dimensions. He carried out a
series of interesting experiments involving the disappearance of objects.
The Academy of the Bounds of Knowledge found an error in his computations
and produced an explanation of the observed phenomena that differed from his
in principle. Beth Lohn, with his powerful mind hypertrophied at the expense
of an underdeveloped sense of moral values and uninhibited desires, was a
man of great strength and equally great egoism who decided to continue his
experiments in his own way. To get convincing proofs he drew into the work
courageous young volunteers who were willing to sacrifice themselves in the
service of science. The people in Beth Lohn's experiments disappeared as
completely as the things had done and, contrary to the hopes of the ruthless
mathematician, not one of them made his presence known from "the other side"
of the other dimension. When Beth Lohn had sent a group of twelve people
into "non-existence," in other words had destroyed them, he was arraigned
before the court. He succeeded in proving that he really believed his
victims to be alive and somewhere in another dimension and that he had only
acted with their consent; he was condemned to exile, spent ten years on
Mercury and then, on returning to Earth, went to the Island of Oblivion, out
of resentment for our world. Mven Mass felt that Beth Lohn's story was very
much like his own; there, too, a secret experiment undertaken for objectives
rejected by science had been forbidden and this was an analogy that Mven
Mass did not like.
In two days' time there would be a transmission round the Great Circle
and after that he would be free for eight
days for the experiment!
Mven Mass threw back his head to look at the sky. The stars seemed
brighter and nearer than usual. Many of them he knew by their ancient names,
knew them as old friends-and were they not, indeed, the age-old friends of
man that had shown him his ways, given him lofty ideas and encouraged him to
dream?
A not very bright star inclining to the northern horizon was the Pole
Star or Gamma Cephei. In the Era of Disunity the Pole Star had been in Ursa
Minor, the Little Bear, but the revolution of the fringe of the Galaxy, and
of the solar system with it, was in the direction of Cepheus. Cygnus, the
Swan, one of the most interesting constellations in the northern sky,
stretching through the Milky Way, had its long neck turned to the south. In
this constellation there was a most beautiful binary star that the ancient
Arabs had named Albireo. It was afterwards discovered that there were really
three stars, the binary Albireo I and Albireo II, a huge blue star with an
extensive planetary system. They were almost as far from us as Deneb, the
huge star in the Swan's tail with a luminosity equal to 4,800 of our suns.
Only eight years before this a direct answer had been received from the
inhabited worlds of the Dencb system to a message transmitted in the second
year of the Great Circle Era. During the last transmission our trusty friend
61 Cygni had received a message of warning from Albireo II some 400 years
after it had been sent but which was nevertheless of great interest. A
famous Cosmic explorer from Albireo II whose name was transmitted in
terrestrial sounds as Vlihh oz Ddiz, had been lost in the vicinity of the
Lyra Constellation where he met one of the greatest dangers of the Cosmos,
an Ookr star. Terrestrial scientists have placed these stars in class E so
called in honour of Einstein, the greatest physicist of ancient days, who
predicted their existence although it was long disputed; the limit for the
mass of a star was even determined and given the name of the Chandrasekhar
Limit. But that ancient astronomer based his calculations exclusively on the
mechanics of gravitation and thermodynamics and did not take into
consideration the intricate electromagnetic structure of the giant stars. It
was precisely these forces that conditioned the existence of E stars that in
size rival the huge red M class giants like Antares or Betelgeuse but their
density is greater, something like that of our Sun. The terrific gravitation
of such bodies prevented radiation so that light could not leave the star
and travel through space.
These inconceivably gigantic and mysterious masses had existed in space
for an infinitely long time, secretly drawing into their inert ocean
everything that came within reach of the inescapable tentacles of their
gravity.
There were periods of the lengthy accumulation of matter that later
ended with the heating of the surface of the star until it reached class O",
that is, reached a temperature of 100,000° C.; at last there came the final
explosion that hurled into space new stars with new planets, in the way the
Crab Nebula once exploded and spread until it had a diameter of fifty
billion kilometres.
There was a similar idea in ancient Indian religious mythology; the
periods of the deity's inert repose were called the Nights of Brahma which
alternated with his Days, the periods of creative activity.
The explosion was equal in force to the explosion of a quadrillion of
the murderous hydrogen bombs made in the Era of Disunity.
The presence in space of absolutely dark stars of the E class could
only be guessed by their gravitation and a spaceship whose course lay in the
vicinity of the monster was doomed. The invisible infrared stars of the T
class also constituted a danger to spaceships; the same applied to dark
clouds of big particles or absolutely cold bodies of the TT class.
Mven Mass stood thinking that the establishment of the Great Circle
that linked up all the worlds inhabited by reasoning beings had been the
greatest of all revolutions for Earth and, consequently, for all inhabited
planets. Firstly, this had been a victory over time, over the shortness of
the span of human life, that had prevented us and our thinking brothers in
other worlds from penetrating into the farther depths of space. The
transmission of information around the Great Circle was the transmission
into an indefinite future since human thought, transmitted in this form,
would continue its journey through space until it reached the farthest
regions. The study of the most distant stars had become possible because the
receipt of information from any place where there were planets that
understood the Circle was only a matter of time. Only recently Earth
received a message from the huge but very distant star known as Gamma Cygni;
the star is 2,800 parsecs from us and a message takes over 9,000 years to
reach Earth but that which had been received was understandable and could be
deciphered by those members of the Great Circle whose thought processes are
similar. It is another matter if a message should come from globular stellar
systems or clusters that are older than our flat systems.
The same is true of the centre of the Galaxy-in its axial star-cloud
there is a colossal zone of life on millions of planet systems that do not
know the darkness of night for they are illuminated by the radiation of the
centre of the Galaxy! Incomprehensible communications have been received
from there, pictures of intricate structure that cannot be expressed by any
of our concepts. The Academy of the Bounds of Knowledge has been trying,
unsuccessfully, to decipher them for eight hundred years. And yet,
perhaps.... The African's heart missed a beat at the suddenness of the
idea-reports from the nearer planet systems, members of the Great Circle,
dealt with the internal life of each of the inhabited planets, its science,
technology, its works of art while the distant, ancient worlds of the Galaxy
showed the external. Cosmic movement of their science and life. How they
rearranged the planetary systems to suit themselves.... How they sweep space
clear of meteoroids that interfere with spaceships and dump them, together
with cold planets unsuited to life, into their central sun in order to
lengthen the duration of its radiation or with the intention of increasing
its heating effect. If that is not enough, perhaps they rearrange
neighbouring planetary systems where the best conditions of life for
gigantic civilizations are created....
Half ironically, half seriously, Mven Mass got in touch with the
Repository of Great Circle Records and selected the catalogue number of a
distant message. The screen of his viewer was filled with strange pictures
that had reached Earth from the globular cluster Omega Centauri. This
cluster is the second nearest to the solar system and is only 6,800 parsecs
removed. Light from its bright stars travelled through outer space for
22,000 years before reaching the eye of earthbound man.
A dense blue haze spread in even layers that were pierced by vertical
black cylinders rotating fairly rapidly. The contours of the cylinders were
scarcely perceptible-from time to time they contracted until they were like
squat cones with their bases joined. Then the blue haze would break up into
fiery crescents that revolved madly about the axes of the cones. Blackness
retreated into the heights, liuge, dazzlingly white columns grew up and from
behind them faceted points, green in colour, formed diagonal curtains....
Mven Mass rubbed his forehead in an effort to grasp anything that made
sense.
On the screen the pointed green blades wound in spirals around the
white columns and suddenly showered down in a stream of gleaming metal
globes that lay in the form of a broad, circular belt. The belt began to
grow in width and in height. Mven Mass smiled and switched off the record,
returning to his former contemplation....
Owing to the absence of populated worlds, or rather, to the absence of
contact with them in the higher latitudes of the Galaxy, the people of Earth
were still unable to get out of the equatorial belt of the Galaxy where
space is darkened by fragments of matter and dust. We could not rise above
the gloom in which our star and its neighbours are plunged. It was,
therefore, difficult for us to learn about the Universe, even with the aid
of the Great Circle.
Mven Mass turned his eyes to the horizon, to the Coma Berenices
Constellation lying below Ursa Major and under the Canes Venatici. This was
the North Pole of the Galaxy-in this direction lay the whole expanse of
extragalactic space in the same way as at the opposite point of the sky, in
the Piscis Anstrinus Constellation, near the well-known star Fomalhaut, lay
the South Pole of the galactic system. In the outer region of the Galaxy,
where our Sun is situated, the width of the branch of the spiral galactic
disc is no more than 600 parsecs. Perpendicular to the plane of the galactic
equator it was enough to cover a distance of 300-400 parsecs to rise above
the level of the Galaxy's gigantic stellar wheel. This route could not be
covered by a spaceship but it was well within reach of Circle transmissions
... but ... so far not a single planet of any of the stars in those areas
had joined the Circle.
These eternal riddles and unanswered questions would have been turned
into nothing if another revolution, the greatest in science, could be
achieved-if time could be conquered, if we could learn to overcome any
distance in any span of time and enter the endless expanses of the Cosmos as
its master. Then our Galaxy and other stellar islands would be no farther
away from us than the tiny islands of the Mediterranean, against which the
sea was splashing down below in the darkness of night. This was
justification for the desperate experiment planned by Renn Bose and being
put into effect by him. by Mven Mass, Director of the Outer Stations. If
only they could have a better scientific basis to their experiment and
obtain the sanction of the Council....
The lights of the Spiral Way changed colour from orange to white-2 a.m.
the traffic peak. Mven Mass remembered that next day there would be the Fete
of the Flaming Bowls to which Chara Nandi had invited him. The Director of
the Outer Stations could not forget the reddish-bronze girl with her
precisely supple movements that he had met on the beach. She was like a
flower of sincerity and strong passions, rare enough in an epoch when
feelings had been disciplined.
Mven Mass went back to his study, called the Institute of
Metagalactics, that worked at night, and asked them to send him
stereotelefilms of a few galaxies next evening. Having obtained their
consent he went up to the roof of the inner building where he kept his
long-range leaping apparatus. Mven Mass was very fond of this unpopular
sport and had achieved a fair degree of skill. He strapped the helium
container to his body, leaped agilely into the air and for a second switched
on a tractor propeller that was driven by a light accumulator. He described
an arc about 600 metres long and, landing on a ledge of the Catering House,
repeated the jump. In five such leaps he reached a small garden under a
limestone cliff where he landed on an aluminium tower, removed the apparatus
and slid down a pole to the ground and so to his hard bed standing under a
huge plane-tree.
The African fell asleep to the rustling of the leaves of the giant
tree.
The Fete of the Flaming Bowls got its name from the well-known poem by
the poet-historian Zann Senn in which he describes the ancient Indian custom
of selecting the most beautiful women to carry swords and bowls containing
flaming aromatic incense to heroes about to set out for the performance of
great deeds. Swords and bowls were no longer in use but remained as the
symbol of heroism. Heroic deeds had grown to countless numbers amongst the
bold and energetic population of the planet. A tremendous capacity for work,
possessed in the past by only those few people who were known as geniuses,
depended entirely on the physical strength of the body and an abundance of
hormone stimnlators. Correct physical training for thousands of years had
made the average person on the planet the equal of the heroes of antiquity,
insatiable in his desire for heroic deeds, love and knowledge.
The Fete of the Flaming Bowls was the women's spring festival. Every
year in the fourth month after the winter solstice or, according to the old
calendar, in April, the most beautiful women on Earth took part in dances,
singing and gymnastics. The finest shades of beauty of the various races
that showed in the mixed population of the planet were to be seen here in
inexhaustible variety like the facets of a precious stone; they gave endless
pleasure to their audiences which included everybody from scientists and
engineers, tired out with their meticulous labours, to inspired artists and
the still youthful pupils of the Third Cycle schools.
No less beautiful was the Festival of Hercules, the men's autumn
festival celebrated in the ninth month. At this festival young men coming of
age reported on the Herculean labours they had performed. Later it became
the custom on these occasions to review all the noteworthy deeds and
achievements of the past year. And so the festival had become a general one,
celebrated by both men and women, and lasting three days-the Day of Useful
Excellence, the Day of Higher Art, and the Day of Scientific Audacity and
Fantasy. One year Mven Mass had been elected hero of the first and third
days.
Veda Kong sang a number of songs. Mven Mass appeared the gigantic Solar
Hall of the Tyrrhenian Stadium during her performance. He found the ninth
sector of the fourth radius where Evda Nahl and Chara Nandi were sitting and
stood there in the shadow of an arcade listening to Veda's low deep voice.
She was dressed in white. Her blonde head thrown back and her face turned to
the upper galleries of the hall, she was singing a song of joy and to the
African she seemed the very incarnation of spring. Every member of the
audience pressed one of the four buttons in front of him. The golden, blue,
emerald or red lights flickering on the ceiling showed the artist to what
extent the performance had been appreciated and took the place of the noisy
applause of former days.
Veda finished singing and was awarded by a bright cluster of gold and
blue lights amongst which the very few green ones were completely lost. Her
face flushed with excitement as usual, she ran to her friends. At that
moment they were joined by Mven Mass whom they heartily welcomed.
The African looked round the stadium in search of his teacher and
predecessor but Darr Veter was nowhere to be seen.
"Where have you hidden Darr Veter?" he asked jokingly, turning to the
three women.
"And where have you hidden Renn Bose?" Evda Nahl replied, and the
African hastily avoided her penetrating glance.
"Veter is digging holes in South America," said the more kind-hearted
Veda and a shadow passed over her face. With a protective gesture Chara
Nandi pulled Veda towards her, pressing her cheek against Veda's. The faces
of the two women were vastly different but possessed a gentle tenderness
which lent them similarity.
Chara's eyebrows; straight and low under a high forehead, resembled the
outline of a soaring bird and were in perfect harmony with her long narrow
eyes. Veda's eyebrows slanted upwards.
"A bird flapping its wings," thought the African. Chara's thick,
shining; black hair lay on her neck and shoulders contrasting sharply with
Veda's fair hair, piled high on her head.
Chara glanced at the clock in the domed roof and got up. Her dress
astounded the African. On the girl's smooth shoulders lay a platinum chain
leaving her high neck open. The chain was fastened below her throat by a
gleaming red tourmaline.
Her firm breasts, like wide upturned bowls carved with a very delicate
chisel, were almost completely exposed. Between them, stretching from the
tourmaline clasp to her belt ran a narrow strip of dark purple velvet.
Similar strips, running across the middle of each breast, were held taut by
the chain and joined on her bare back. The girl's very narrow waist was
encircled by a white belt besprin-kled with black stars and fastened by a
platinum buckle in the form of a crescent, from which a strip of dark purple
velvet hung down to her knees. Attached to her belt behind was what seemed
like half a long skirt of heavy white silk, also decorated with black stars.
The dancer wore no
jewels with the exception of glittering buckles on her tiny black
slippers.
, "It will soon be my turn!" said Chara calmly making her way towards
the arcade exit; she glanced at Mven lass and disappeared, accompanied by
whispered questions and thousands of curious glances.
The stage was occupied by a gymnast, a beautifully proportioned girl no
more than eighteen years old. In the golden floodlights, to the recitative
of the music, she went through an amazingly rapid succession of leaps,
springs and turns, balancing with unbelievable equilibrium to slow, lyrical
passages of music. The audience awarded her performance with a multitude of
golden lights and Mven Mass thought that it would not be easy for Chara
Nandi to dance after such a successful number. He looked anxiously at the
faceless multitude of people opposite and suddenly noticed the artist Cart
Sann sitting in the third sector. The latter greeted him with a gaiety that
the African felt out of place-who, if not the artist who had painted Chara's
picture as the Daughter of the Mediterranean, should have been perturbed at
the outcome of her performance.
The African was just thinking that after his experiment he would go to
see the Daughter of the Mediterranean when the lights overhead were
extinguished. The transparent floor of organic glass gleamed with the
cherry-red light of hot iron. Streams of red light poured out from under low
footlights around the stage. The lights moved back and forth keeping time
with the marked rhythm of the melody and merging with the resonant song of
the violins and the low hum of bronze strings. Mven Mass was somewhat
staggered by the power and tempestuousness of the music and did not
immediately notice Chara as she appeared in the centre of that flaming floor
and began her dance at a Speed that took the onlookers' breath away.
Mven Mass was afraid of what might happen if the music demanded still
greater acceleration of the dance. She danced not only with her legs and
arms-the girl's entire body responded to the blazing fire of the music with
equally searing flames of life. The African thought that if the women of
ancient India had been like Chara, then the poet had been right in likening
them to flaming bowls and in giving that name to the women's fete.
Chara's reddish sunburn turned to a bright copper in the glow of the
stage and the floor. Mven Mass's heart beat wildly. The woman he had seen on
the fabulous planet of Epsilon Toucanis had skin of just that colour. At
that time, also, he had learned there existed such a thing as the
inspiration of a body capable of employing its movements, its delicate
changes of beautiful forms, to express the most profound shades of feeling,
fantasy and passion, to express a prayer for happiness.
Up to that moment he had known nothing but the urge to overcome the
unattainable distance of ninety parsecs but now Mven Mass realized that
flowers just as beautiful as the carefully nurtured picture of the distant
planet were to be found in the inexhaustible treasure-house of terrestrial
beauty. But his long-cherished urge to achieve an unattainable dream did not
pass so quickly. Chara's likeness to the red-skinned daughter in the world
of Epsilon Toucanis only served to strengthen the determination of the
Director of the Outer Stations. If so much joy was to be felt from one Chara
Nandi what would the world be like where the majority of the women were like
her?!
Evda Nahl and Veda Kong, excellent dancers themselves, were staggered
at this, the first of Chara's dances that they had seen. Veda,
anthropologist and specialist in the history of the ancient races, had come
to the decision that in the past the women of Gondwana, the southern
countries, had exceeded the men in number because men were often killed
hunting dangerous wild beasts. Later when the despotic states of the Ancient
East were established in the densely populated countries of the south, the
men continued to be killed in wars, by religious excesses and by the whims
of the despots. The daughters of the south went through a period of the
strictest selection that developed the finer points of adaptation. In the
north, where the population was scantier and nature less bounteous, there
had not been such despotism in the Dark Ages. More men survived, women were
more valued and lived a more dignified life.
Veda followed Chara's every gesture and conceived the idea that in all
her movements there was an amazing duality-they were at once gentle and
predatory. The gentleness came from the graceful movements and unbelievable
suppleness of the body and the predatory impression was created by the
abrupt changes, turns and poses that followed each other with the elusive
rapidity that is natural in the wild beast. This feline litheness had been
achieved by the dark-skinned daughters of Gondwana in the thousands of years
of the struggle for existence through which the debased and enslaved women
of the southern continents had lived ... but in Chara it was harmonically
combined with the small firm features of a Creto-Hellenic face.
The dissonant sounds of some percussion instruments merged in a short,
slower adagio. The urgent, ever swifter rhythm of the rise and fall of human
emotions was expressed in the dance by the alternation of movements full of
meaning and their almost complete cessation when the dancer turned into a
motionless statue. Slumbering emotions were aroused, flared up stormily,
wilted in their exhaustion, died and were born again, stormy and untasted
-life, fettered and struggling against the inevitable march of time, against
the clear-cut, merciless definiteness of duty and fate. Evda Nahl felt that
the psychological basis of the dance was something so near to her that her
cheeks became flushed and her breathing quickened.
Mven Mass did not know that the composer had written the ballet suite
specially for Chara Nandi, but he was no longer afraid of the wild tempo
when he saw how well the girl was coping with it. Scarlet waves of light
embraced her copper body, gave off crimson splashes from her strong legs,
were drowned in the dark whirls of velvet and turned the white silk to the
pink of dawn. Her arms, raised and thrown back, slowly ceased their motion
over her head. Suddenly, without any finale, the music broke off in a stormy
clangour of high notes and the red lights came to a standstill and were
extinguished. The high dome of the building was flooded with its usual
light. The tired girl bowed her head and her thick hair covered her face.
The thousands of golden lights were followed by a dull noise. The audience
were doing Chara the greatest of all honours-they were thanking her by
standing up and stretching their clasped hands towards her. Chara, who,
before the performance, had not known a tremor, lost her self-possession,
threw back the hair from her face and ran away, after a glance towards the
upper galleries. Mven Mass knew then why the artist had been so calm-he knew
his model.
The Master of Ceremonies announced an entr'acte. Mven Mass hurried to
look for Chara while Veda Kong and Evda Nahl went out on to the gigantic
opaque glass staircase, a thousand metres wide, that led from the stadium
straight down to the sea. The evening twilight, lucid and warm, tempted the
two women to bathe, following the example of thousands of other spectators
from the fete.
"No wonder I was attracted to Chara Nandi the moment I saw her," said
Evda Nahl. "She's a remarkable artist. Today we have seen the Dance of the
Power of Life, in which is incorporated the best of everything that
constitutes the foundation of the human soul and is frequently its ruler.
That must contain something of the erotic dances of the ancients!"
"Now I understand Cart Sann, for beauty really is more important than
we think. Beauty is the happiness and the meaning of life-how well he said
that! And your definition is a true one!" agreed Veda, kicking off a shoe
and putting her foot into the warm water that splashed against the steps.
"It is a true one if the psychic forces are born of a healthy body full
of energy," Evda Nahl corrected her as she removed her clothes and jumped
into the transparent water. Veda swam after her and they went together to a
huge rubber island that shone silver about a mile away from the stadium. The
flat surface of the island, level with the water, was surrounded by rows of
shelters in the shape of shells of mother-of-pearl plastic, big enough to
screen three or four people from the sun and wind and to isolate them from
their neighbours.
The two women lay down on the soft, swaying floor of a "shell,"
breathing deeply of the eternally fresh smell of the sea.
"You've got beautifully tanned since I met you on the beach!" said Veda
looking at her companion. "Have you been at the seaside or does it come from
sunburn pills?"
"SB pills," admitted Evda, "I've been in the sun for only two days,
yesterday and today. I haven't got such wonderful skin as Chara Nandi."
"Don't you really know where Renn Bose is?" continued Veda.
"I know approximately and that is sufficient to worry me!" answered
Evda Nahl, softly.
"Do you really want..." began Veda and then stopped but Evda lifted her
lazily closed eyelids and looked her straight in the eyes.
"It seems to me that Renn Bose is somehow ... helpless, like an
undeveloped boy," Veda objected, hesitantly, "and you're so strong, you have
an intellect that is the equal of any man's. One always feels that inside
you there is a steel rod, your will-power...."
"Renn Bose told me the same. But you're wrong in your estimation of
him, you're as one-sided as Renn Bose himself. He is a man with a bold and
powerful intellect and a terrific capacity for work. Even today there are
few to equal him on our planet. It is the comparison of his other qualities
with his great talents that makes them seem undeveloped because they are
just about the average or even puerile, perhaps. You were right in calling
Renn a boy, he is, but at the same time he's a hero in the true sense of the
word. Take Darr Veter-there's something boylike in him, too, but with him
it's just a superabundance of physical strength and not the lack of it, like
it is with Renn."
"What do you think of Mven?" Veda inquired, "now that you know him
better."
"Mven Mass is a splendid combination of the cold intellect and the
archaic fury of desires. He is a man of great ability and is highly educated
but at the same time he is the high priest of nature's elemental forces!"
Veda Kong burst out laughing. "How can I learn to give such precise
character studies?!"
''Psychology is my line," said Evda, shrugging her shoulders. "But let
me ask you a question. Do you know that Darr Veter is a man that I like very
much?"
"You're afraid of half-formed decisions?" Veda blushed. "No, this time
there will be no fatal half-way decisions and insincerity. Everything is as
clear as crystal....'' Under the penetrating glance of the psychiatrist,
Veda continued:
"Erg Noor ... our ways parted long ago. I could not give way to a new
feeling as long as he was in the Cosmos. I could not draw myself away and so
weaken the strength of my hopes, my faith in his return. Now it is only a
case of precise calculation and confidence. Erg Noor knows everything but is
going his own way."
Evda Nahl placed her slender arm round Veda's shoulder.
"So it's Darr Veter?"
"Yes," answered Veda, firmly.
"Does he know?"
"No. Later, when Tantra arrives.... Isn't it time for us to go back?"
"I have to leave the fete," said Evda Nahl, "my holiday is finished. I
have a big job to do in the Academy of Sorrow and Joy, and I must see my
daughter before I go there."
"Is she a big girl?"
"Seventeen. My son is older. I have done the duty of every woman who is
normally developed and has normal heredity-two children, no less! Now I want
a third one-but I want him grown up!" Evda Nahl smiled and her serious face
was lit up with the tenderness of love, her bow-shaped upper lip lifted
slightly.
"I imagine a fine, big-eyed boy with such a loving and ever-astonished
mouth ... with freckles and a snub nose," said Veda, slyly, looking straight
in front of her. Her companion, after a short pause, asked her;
"Have you got any new job yet?"
"No, I'm waiting for Tuntra, then there will be a big expedition."
''Then come with me to visit my daughter," suggested Evda, and Veda
gladly consented.
The whole of one wall of the observatory was taken up with a
seven-metre hemispherical screen for the demonstration of films and photos
taken by powerful telescopes. Mven Mass switched on a general view of a
section of the sky near the North Pole of the Galaxy, the meridional strip
of constellations from Ursa Major to Corvus and Centaurus. In this part, in
Canes Venatici, Coma Berenices and Virgo there were many galaxies, islands
of stars in the form of flat wheels or discs. An especially large number of
them had been discovered in Coma Berenices-separate galaxies, of regular and
irregular form, showing differen