Birthplace of Creation A Captain Future Novelet by EDMOND HAMILTON In their final adventure the Futuremen are called on to save the Universe itself from a madman’s destructive whim! gone out to other worlds and other stars. They had ranged far across space, founding CHAPTER I colonies on asteroids and cities on the shores of alien seas. But they left the Citadel of the Futuremen deathly airless Moon alone. They had looked at it once and gone away. There were only four who made the Moon their G ARRAND watched the face of the home—and not all of those four where Moon grow larger in the forward men. port of his small cruiser. A white and Tycho Crater widened out below the terrible face, he thought. A death’s- head little ship. Licking dry lips metallic with with meteor-gnawed bones and gaping the taste of fear, Garrand consulted a map, crater-wounds, bleak and cruel and very drawn carefully to scale and showing in silent, watching him come and thinking that desolation one intricate diagram of a secret boding thoughts about him. A man-made structure. There were ominous feeling of sickness grew in him. gaps in that diagram and Garrand was “I am a fool and soon I will probably be painfully aware of them. He made his a dead fool,” he said to himself. calculations and set his ship down well He was not a brave man. He was very beyond the outer periphery of defenses fond of living and he did not think of death marked on the chart. at all as a thing to be dared and laughed at. His landing was a clumsy nervous one. The knowledge that he was likely to die White pumice-dust burst upward around there on the Moon gave him qualms of the hull and settled slowly back again. physical anguish that made him look as Garrand cut his jets and sat for a moment white and hollow as the stony face that looking out across Tycho, all ringed watched him through the port. And yet he around in the distance with cliffs and spires did not turn back. There was something in and pinnacles of blasted rock that glittered Garrand that was stronger than his fear. in the light. There was no sign of the His hands trembled, but they held the structure indicated on the chart. It was all cruiser grimly on its course. below ground. Even its observatory dome The stark plains and mountain ranges was set flush, reflecting the Sun’s took size and shape, the lonely mountains unsoftened glare no more than the of the Moon that looked on nothing and the surrounding plain. plains where nothing stirred, not even the smallest wind or whirl of dust. Men had 1 P RESENTLY Garrand rose, moving waste until his footsteps in the dust with the stiff reluctance of a man approached the line of that outer circle on going to the gallows. He checked over the the map. Then the detector spoke with a bulky shapes of a considerable mass of faint small clicking. equipment. His examination was minute Garrand stopped. He bent over the panel and he made one or two readjustments. of the mechanism, a jumble of dials, Then he struggled into a pressure-suit and sorters, frequency-indicators and pattern- opened the airlock. The air went out with a indicators. Above them a red pip burned in whistling rush and after that there was no a ground- glass f ield. His heart hammered sound, only the utter silence of a world that hard and he reached hastily for a black has heard nothing since it was made. oblong bulk beside the detector. Working in that vacuum Garrand He thought, “I’m still far enough away carried out a light hand-sledge and set it in so that the blast won't be lethal if this the dust. Then he brought out the bulky doesn’t work.” pieces of equipment and loaded them onto The thought was comforting but it. He was able to do this alone because of unconvincing. He forced his hand to the weak gravitation and when he was steady, to pick up the four-pronged plugs through he was able for the same reason to and insert them, one by one in the proper tow the sledge behind him. order, into the side of the detector. Then he He set off across the crater. The glare dropped behind the sledge and waited. was intense. Sweat gathered on him and The black oblong hummed. He could ran in slow trickles down his face. He feel it humming where his shoulder suffered in the heavy armor, setting one touched the metal of the sledge. It was weighted boot before the other, with the designed to pick up its readings from the little puffs of dust rising and falling back at detector, to formulate them, adjust itself every step, ha uling the sledge behind him. automatically to the indicated pattern and And fear grew steadily in him as he went frequency, to broadcast an electronic on. barrier that would blank out the impulse- He knew—all the System knew—that receptivity of the hidden trap's sensor-unit. the four who lived here were not here now, That was its purpose. It should work. But if that they were far away on a distant it did not . . . troubled world. But their formidable name He waited, the muscles of his belly and presence seemed to h aunt this lifeless knotted tight. There was no flash or tremor sphere and he was walking now into the of a blast. After he had counted slowly to a teeth of the deadly defenses they had left hundred he got up again and looked. The behind them. red pip had faded from the ground-glass “They can be beaten,” he told himself, screen. There was a white one in place of sweating. “I’ve got to beat them.” it. He studied his map again. He knew Garrand watched that white pip as exactly how far he had come from the ship. though it were the face of his patron saint, Leaving himself a wide margin of safety he hauling the sledge on slowly through that activated the detector- mechanism on the outer circle and through the ones beyond it sledge. The helmet of his pressure-suit was that were only guessed at. Three times fitted with ultra-sensitive hearing devices more the urgent clicking sounded in his that had nothing to do with sonic waves ears and the dials and pointers changed— but translated sub-electronic impulses from and three times the pip faded from red to the detector into audible sound-signals. white and Garrand was still alive when he He stood still, listening intently. But the reached the metal valve door set into the detector said nothing and he went on, very floor of the crater. slowly now and cautiously, across the dead 2 The controls of that door were plainly in was where he had no right to be. He began sight but he did not touch them. Instead he to listen for the voices and the steps of hauled a portable scanner off the sledge those who might come in and find him. and used it to examine the intimate They were far away and Garrand knew molecular structure of the metal and all its that he was safe. control connections. By this means he But he was not a criminal by habit and found the particular bolt- head that was a now that the challenge to his skill was past switch and turned it, immobilizing a he began to feel increasingly guilty and certain device set to catch an unknowing unclean. Personal belongings accused him, intruder as soon as he opened the valve. an open book, a pair of boots, beds and Within minutes after that Garrand had chests and clothing. If it had been merely a the door open and was standing at the head laboratory he would not have minded so of a steep flight of steps, going down. His much—but it was also a dwelling place heart was still thudding away and he felt and he felt like a common thief. weak in the knees—but he was filled with T exultation and a great pride. Few other HAT feeling was forgotten when he men, he thought, perhaps none, could have entered the vault. There were many penetrated safely to the very threshold of things in that vast lunar cavern, but this most impregnable of all places in the Garrand had no more than a passing glance Solar System. for any of them except the massive file- He did not relax his caution. A large racks where the recorded data which mass of equipment went with him down related to voyages were spooled and kept. the dark stairway, including the scanner. Under the clear light that had come on The valve closed automatically behind him of itself with the opening of the door and below in a small chamber he waited Garrand searched the racks, puzzling out until pressure had build up and another the intricate filing system. He had taken off door automatically opened. He found his helmet. His hands shook visibly and his nothing more of menace except a system of breathing was loud and irregular but these alarm bells, which he put out of were only secondary manifestations. commission—not because there was His mind, faced with a difficult problem anyone to hear them but because he knew to solve, slipped by long habit into there would be recorders and he wanted no calculating- machine efficiency and it was signs, audible or visible, of his visit. not long before he found what he wanted. He took the spool in his two hands, as T HE recorders themselves were tenderly as though it were made of the relatively easy to detect. With an delicate stuff of dreams and apt to shatter instrument brought for the purpose he at a breath. He carried it to the large table blanked off their relay systems and went that stood by the racks and fed the end of on across the great circular central the tape into a reader. His face had grown chamber with the glassite dome through pale and quite rigid except that his mouth which the sunlight poured. He peered with twitched a little at the corners. He set up a scientist’s fascinated wonder at the his last piece of equipment beside the laboratory apparatus of various sorts in that reader, a photosonic recorder used to make and the smaller chambers which opened copies of a master spool, synchronized off it until he came to what of all things he them and then closed the switches. was looking for—the heavy locked door of The two spools unwound, one giving, a vault, sunk deep in the lunar rock. the other receiving, and Garrand remained Garrand worked for a long time over motionless over the viewer, seeing visions that door. The silence was beginning to get beyond price and listening to the voices to him and the uneasy knowledge that he that spoke of cosmic secrets. When the 3 spool was finished it was a long time Curt Newton, the man—Otho, the before he moved. His eyes were still busy android or artificial man who was human with their visions and they were strangely in everything but origin—Grag, the dull and shining all at once, shining and far towering metal man or intelligent robot— away. and Simon Wright, he who had once been a man but whose brain only now lived on A T last he shook himself and laughed, in a strange mechanical body. small gasping sound that might well Their ship came down like a have been a sob. He replaced the original thunderbolt of metal from the sky. The in the rack and put the second spool into a camouflaged doors of an underground special pouch on his belt. In the vault he hangar opened silently to receive it and left everything exactly as he had found it closed as silently. and when he came out again onto the Into the great circular room beneath the Moon's surface he reset the hidden trigger observatory dome the four Futuremen that guarded the outer door. came. Curt Newton paused by the wall to As he had penetrated the defences on activate the recorder panel. It showed the plain, so he went back through them blank. It always showed blank. again, in a double agony lest now, when he He sat down slowly, a tall man with red had the thing he had taken such incredible hair and a bronzed face that looked now chances for, he should blunder and be very tired. killed. The shadows of the crater edge “Do you think our work out there will were crawling toward him, sharp and stick, Simon?” he asked. black. The last premonitory clicking of the He addressed the small square metal detector, the last fading of the warning pip case hovering on motor-beams before him, from red to white and he was safe, running its strange “face” of lens-eyes turned toward the ship into the knife-edged toward him. The serum-case, in which darkness of the shadow. Simon Wright’s brain lived its life. Long before night came Garrand was “I am confident,” said Simon with his gone, plunging across the narrow gulf to precise articulation of metallic artificial Earth. He did not know how to give vent to accents, “that there will be no more trouble the wildness of his exultation, so he held it between Uranus Mines and the natives.” in but it burned in his face and eyes. Curt frowned and sighed. “I hope so. “Tomorrow,” he said aloud to himself, When will they learn how to deal with over and over. “Tomorrow we’ll be on our planetary primitives?” way.” He laughed, addressing someone Grag spoke up loudly. He was standing, who was not present. “You said I couldn’t a seven-foot giant of metal, with his head do it, Herrick. You said I couldn’t!” turned and his photoelectric eyes staring Behind him the darkening face of the intently across the big room. Moon looked after him. “Curt, someone’s been here,” his great voice boomed. “No. I checked the recorders,” Newton said without turning. CHAPTER II “I don’t care,” Grag persisted. “That chair by the vault door has been moved. I Cosmic Secret was the last one out when we left and I remember exactly where it stood. It’s been moved a good three inches.” F OUR came home to the Moon after Otho burst into laughter. “Listen to Old many days. Four, of whom only one Hawkeye. Three inches!” The android, so was an ordinary man. perfectly human in appearance that only 4 something bright and strange lurking in his would be capable. But that seems green eyes betrayed an inner difference, incongruous. Why would a top scientist went on mockingly, “Are you sure it’s not come prowling in here like a common two and a half inches ?” thief?” Grag began to protest angrily in his Curt turned. “Grag, will you see if foghorn voice. Curt swung around irritably anything else has been moved or taken?” to silence them. But Simon Wright said The metal giant started stalking through gravely, “Wait, Curtis. You know that the the rooms. Curt remained silent and constitution of Grag's metal brain makes thoughtful, the frown on his tanned face his memory absolutely photographic. If he deepening. says the chair has been moved it has been Grag came back. “No. Nothing else has moved.” been tampered with.” “But the recorders?” “Yet it was,” Curt said slowly. He “They could have been blanked, you looked again at Simon. “I've been thinking. know. It's theoretically possible.” An expert in sub-electronics . . . Do you “Only theoretically—” Curt began and remember the nuclear physics man down at then he stopped and swore. “Blast you, New York Tech whom we met at Grag! Why did you have to raise a doubt in Government Center a few months ago?” my mind? Now I’ll have to take down the “Garris? Garrand—some name like recorders to check them and that’s the that? I remember. A nice little man.” devil and all of a job.” “Yes, I thought so too—very eager Irritation riding him, he went out of the about his work. But I remember now he big room and came back with tools. He asked me a question—” scowled at Grag. “You’d better be right!” C Simon and Otho helped him in the URT broke off suddenly. He went delicate work of disassembling the rapidly across the big room, unlocked recorders. They examined both the the vault door and inside the silent lunar microfilm and the interior relay circuits bit cavern he went straight to the files. by bit. Simon had followed him. And when Curt's irritation left him suddenly. He Simon saw the spool that Curt drew from looked sharply at the others. He had found the file his lens-eyes turned to Curt's face it—the minute blurred line where the film with a startled swiftness. had started to roll and been arrested. The “Curtis, no! You don't think—” relay circuits were a fraction of a decimal “It was what he asked me about,” Curt out of synchronization now. said. “The Birthplace.” Otho whistled softly. “Blanked!” he The word went echoing solemnly back said. “And so beautifully done—nothing and forth around the cold rock walls. And fused or blown out, the derangement so Curt stared at Simon, not really seeing him, small that you’d never notice it unless you seeing uncanny awesome things that lived were searching for it.” in memory, and a strange look came into “So I was right?” Grag boomed his face—a strange look indeed for the triumphantly. “I knew I was right. When I man Curt Newton. A look of fear. see a thing that’s changed I—” Simon said, “How could he know of the “Shut up,” Curt Newton told him. He Birthplace?” looked, puzzled, at Simon. “No criminal That word had never been spoken to did this—no ordinary criminal. The job of anyone. They hardly spoke it even among blanking these relays required tremendous themselves. Such a secret was not for the scientific ability.” knowledge nor the use of men and they Simon brooded, hovering. “That's had guarded it more carefully than the sum obvious. Only an expert in sub-electronics total of all other knowledge they 5 possessed. Now the very sound of that gestures. The intricate multichron on the name brought Grag and Otho to the door wall whirred softly and the minutes slid and wrought a sudden tension that filled away, on Earth, on Mars, on the far-flung the cavern with a waiting stillness. worlds of the System. No one spoke and Curt said heavily, “He connected the Ezra did not come back. theoretical possibility with the work we did Simon said at last, “It would take time, on Mercury. He's a brilliant man, Simon— even for Ezra.” too brilliant.” “Time!” said Curt. “If Garrand has the “Perhaps,” said Grag, “he only looked secret we have no time.” for the secret and couldn’t find it. After all, He paced the small neat room, a man our filing system . . .” oppressed with heavy thoughts. The sound Curt shook his head. “If he could get in of the door opening brought him whirling here he could find what he wanted.” He around to face Ezra almost as though he examined the spool. “He could make a were facing his executioner. copy of this and there would be no way of “Well?” telling that it had been done.” “Garrand took off from Earth on the He stood motionless for a moment twenty-first,” said Ezra. “He fle w a ship of longer and no one spoke. Otho studied his his own, apparently an experimental model face and shot one quick bright glance at on which he has been working for some Simon. Simon moved uneasily on his time in company with a man named gliding force-beams. Herrick, who is also listed as chief pilot. Curt replaced the spool and turned. Destination, none. Purpose, cosmic ray “We've got to find out about this man. research beyond the System. Because of We'll go to New York, at once.” Garrand's reputation and standing there Very soon thereafter the Comet rose was no difficulty about the clearance. That from the dark gap of the hangar- mouth and was all I could get.” shot away toward the great green globe of “That’s enough,” said Curt. “More than Earth. enough.” His face was bleak and the color Not much later, at headquarters of the had gone out of it under the tan. He looked Planet Police in New York, old marshal very tired and in a way so strange that Ezra Ezra Gurney stared at Curt Newton in came up to him and demanded, “What is it, blank amazement. Curt? What did Garrand take from the “Garrand?” he said. “But he’s a laboratory?” reputable man, a scientist!” Curt answered, “He took the secret of “Nevertheless,” said Curt grimly, “I the Birthplace of Matter.” want all the information you can get and Ezra stared, uncomprehending. “Is that a fast.” secret you can tell me?” Simon spoke. “This is urgent, Ezra. We C cannot afford delay.” URT said hopelessly, “I can tell you The grizzled old spaceman glanced from now. For it’s known now to Garrand one to the other, and then to Otho. and this other man.” “Something really bad, eh? All right, I’ll “What is it, then?” do what I can.” “Ezra, it is the secret of creation.” He went out of the office. Otho leaned There was a long silence. It was obvious against the wall and remained motionless, from Gurney's face that the term was too watching Curt. Simon hovered near the large for him to understand. Yet Curt desk. Neither one of them was afflicted Newton did not continue as yet. He looked with nerves. Curt moved restlessly about, beyond them and his face was drawn and brooding, his hands touching things and haggard. putting them down again in wire-taut 6 “We’ll have to go back there,” he said, Awe was in Ezra's faded old eyes. “And his voice low. “We'll have to. And I hoped you found that? And never told—never let never to go back.” anyone guess—” Simon's expressionless eyes were fixed “Garrand guessed,” Curt said bitterly. on him. Otho said loudly, “What’s there to “He connected our work at Mercury with be afraid of? We ran the whirls before. our mysterious vo yage. He tried to learn And as for Garrand and the other one—” what I knew and when I would tell him “I am not afraid of them,” Curt Newton nothing he came to the Moon and risked said. death to steal our records. And now he’s “I know,” said Simon. “I was the only gone to find it for himself.” one who was with you in the shrine of the Simon Wright said somberly, “He will Watchers there. I know what you are afraid only reap disaster if he tries to take it. I of—yourself.” saw what almost happened there to you, “I still don't get it,” Ezra said. “The Curtis.” secret of creation? Creation of what?” “It’s my fault,” Curt said harshly. “We “Of the universe, Ezra. Of all the matter should have left no record. But I could not in the universe.” quite destroy it.” He paused, then went on A strange wonder came on Gurney’s rapidly. “We've got to overtake him. What timeworn face. He said nothing. He the other man, Herrick, may have in mind waited. we can't tell. But Garrand is a fanatical “You remember,” Curt told him, “when researcher, who will tamper with the we came back from our first deep-space instruments of the Watchers as I did. He voyage? You remember that right after that won’t stop where I stopped!” we designed the electron-assembly plants Ezra jumped to his feet. “I can have that they've used ever since to replenish cruisers after him in an hour.” Mercury's thinning atmosphere? Where do “They couldn’t catch him now, Ezra. you think we got the knowledge to do that, The Comet might. We'll have to make to juggle electrons into desired types of certain preparations and they’ll take time. matter on a big scale?” But even so we may catch him.” Gurney's voice was a whisper now. He turned, moving swiftly toward the “You got that knowledge out in deep door as though physical action were a space?” relief from overpowering tension. Ezra “In deep, deep space, Ezra. Near the stopped him. “Curt, wait! Let me go with center of our galaxy, amid the thick star- you. I should, you know, if it's a case of clusters and nebulae beyond Sagittarius. catching a lawbreaker.” There lies the beating heart of our Newton looked at him. “No, Ezra. universe.” You’re only trapped by the lure of this He made a gesture. “Back in the thing as I was. As I was . . . No.” Twentieth Century the scientist Millikan Simon's metallic voice intervened. “Let first guessed the truth. The matter of the him go with us, Curtis. I think we might universe constantly melts away into need him—that you might need him.” radiation. Millikan believed that A look passed between them. Then, somewhere in the universe was a place silently, Curt nodded. where radiation was somehow built back Back to the Moon, with five instead of into matter and that the so-called cosmic four, went the Comet on wings of flame. rays were the 'birth-cry' of the newborn In the hours that followed, the closed matter. The fount of our material universe, hangar-doors in silent Tycho gave no hint the birthplace of material creation.” of the desperate rushed activity beneath. But less than twenty-four hours after its return from Uranus the ship left the Moon 7 a second time. It went out through the with the glow of drowned and captured planetary orbits like a flying prisoner Suns. And beyond them all—the nebulae, breaking out through bars, poised for a the clusters and the stars—there showed moment beyond Pluto to shift into a new the black brooding lightless immensity of a kind of motion, then was gone into the cloud of cosmic dust. outer darkness. The soul of Ezra Gurney shook within him. Men had no business here in this battleground of angry gods. Men? But was he here with men? CHAPTER III “One-point- four degrees zenith,” came the metallic voice of Simon Wright from The Birthplace where he hovered above a bulky instrument. “Check,” Curt Newton said and moved T HE Comet was a fleck, a mote, a tiny controls slightly. Then he asked, “Dust?” gleam of man- made light falling into “Definitely higher than average infinity. Behind it, lost somewhere along interstellar density now,” Otho reported, the farthest shores of a lightless sea, lay from his own place at the wide instrument Earth and Sol and the outposts of familiar panel. “It’ll thicken fast as we approach the stars. Ahead was the great wilderness of main cloud.” Sagittarius, the teeming star-jungle that to Ezra looked at them—at the square, the eye seemed crowded thick with hovering metal case of the living brain, at burning Suns and nebulae. the lithe eager android peering forward The five within the ship where silent. into the abyss with burning green eyes, at Four were busy with the memories they the giant imperturbable metal bulk of the had of the time they had come this way robot. before, with the knowledge of what was Not men, no! He was out here in the still to be encountered. One, Ezra Gurney, great deeps, rushing toward the mightiest could find no words to speak. He was a secret of infinity, with creatures unhuman, veteran spaceman. He had been a veteran with— when Curt Newton was born. He knew the Curt turned, and smiled briefly and Solar System from Pluto to Mercury and wearily at him. And the clamoring panic in back again and he knew how the naked Ezra was suddenly gone. Why, these were undimmed stars could shine. his oldest staunchest friends, unshakably But this was different—this voyaging of loyal and true. deepest space, this pursuing of the fleets He drew a ong breath. “I don’t mind l and navies of the stars to their own harbor, telling you that it’s nearly got me down.” this going in among them. In a way Ezra “You’ve got worse coming,” Curt said Gurney was afraid. No man, not even Curt uncomfortingly. “We’ll hit the main cloud Newton, could look at that flaming sky soon.” ahead and not be a little afraid. “The cloud?” The Comet had come into the region of “The great cloud of cosmic dust that the great clusters. Mighty hives of gathered surrounds the Birthplace. That dust is born Suns blazed and swarmed, rolling across from the Birthplace—and flows out in space and time, carrying after them mighty tides through our hole universe.” sweeping trains of scattered stars. Between “To be born into new worlds?” and beyond the clusters and their trailing “Yes. Weizsacker fathomed that part of star-streams shone the glowing clouds of the cycle, long ago in the nineteen forties nebulae, banners of light flung out for a when he formulated his theory of the million miles across the firmament, ablaze 8 gathering of the cosmic dust into new why we have come. Garrand must not use planets.” those instruments.” Before them now rose a wall of Suns, “Nobody must use them,” said Simon. glaring like cyclopean furnaces as the Curt said nothing to that. Comet seemingly crawled toward them. Gurney, looking ahead, saw the black Almost it seemed that they could hear the cloud widening out across the starry clang and thunder of cosmic forges as their universe like a great tide of doom, steadily tiny craft approached and went between blotting out the stars. A fitting cosmic the flaming giants. shroud for the greatest of cosmic secrets, White and wild flared a far- flung nebula he thought. Its fringes engulfed bright stars to the left beyond that rampart of stars. But that shone wanly through the dimness like ahead there gloomed farther still the black dying eyes. cloud that now seemed eating up the “This dust,” said Simon, “is newborn universe with jaws of darkness as they matter, spawned by the Birthplace and steadily approached it. pumped outward by pressure of radiation “No sign of any other ship outside the to flow out to the whole universe.” cloud,” Otho reported coolly. “Our “And the—the secret itself—is inside?” detectors won’t range inside it, of course.” “Yes.” “They had too big a start,” Curt said There was no moment when the Comet broodingly. “Two many days. Garrand and plunged suddenly within the cloud. Rather the other must already have been on the the dust thickened steadily until all about world of the Watchers for some time.” the flying ship was a deepening haze, “Unless the whirls wrecked them,” deepest and darkest ahead but drawing Otho suggested. more and more veils behind them so that “Wishful thinking,” Curt said. “We ran the stars back there shone like smothered the whirls and so could they.” witch-fires. Simon said, “Curtis, you will not go The ship began to tremble as it into the shrine of the Watchers again?” encountered flowing spatial currents of Curt Newton did not look at him. “I’ll denser dust. Struts and girders protested have to if that’s where Garrand is.” with slight creakings and then more loudly. “You don’t have to, Curtis. We three They strapped into the recoil-chairs at could go.” Curt's orders. “Here it comes,” said Grag in loud N OW, Curt looked at Simon, his complaint. “I remember last time almost tanned face set and unreadable. “You every bone in my body was broken.” don’t trust me with the power of the Otho laughed. He started a caustic retort Watchers?” but had no time to voice it. “You know what that power almost did To Gurney the Comet seemed suddenly to you before. It is for you to say.” to have crashed. The tell- tales on the panel Curt looked ahead and said doggedly, “I went crazy and the recoil-chairs screamed am not afraid and I will go in there after in outrage as the ship was batted through him.” the haze by unseen giant hands. Ezra Gurney, puzzled by the tension There was nothing they could do but between them, asked, “Who are the hang on. There was nothing even for Curt Watchers?” to do. The automatic pilot and stabilizers “They have been dead for ages,” Curt had to do it all now or they were finished. said slowly. “But long ago they penetrated The mechanisms functioned staunchly. the Birthplace and conquered its secret and Again and again they snatched the buffeted set up instruments to wield its powers. It’s little ship out of raging eddies of dust- currents and hurled it forward again. Now 9 the whole hull was creaking and groaning mystic, as though he could see beyond the from constantly changing stresses and the wonder and the glory of the Birthplace to hiss of dust against its plates became a its innermost secret heart and glimpse there rising and falling roar. the hidden laws by which it worked and Ezra Gurney felt a quaking dread. He carried out its destiny. had already seen too much, had come too “Yes,” said Curt, “we're going in.” He far. Now he felt that a universe become leaned forward over the controls, his face sentient and hostile was wrathfully bathed in the misty radiance so that it repelling them from its hidden heart, from seemed not his familiar face at all but the its supreme secret. countenance of a being half godlike with The Comet fought forward, relentlessly the strange light flickering in his eyes. impelled by its own mechanical brains, “You see how it is, Ezra?” he asked. until the dust began to thin. It tore onward, “How it spins like a great centrifuge, still buffeted by swirling currents and sucking in the spent energy of Suns and drenched by radiation. And now, ahead, whirling it in currents of incalculable Ezra saw a vast hazy space inside the strength until, in some utterly undreamable denser blackness of the cloud. And far way, the energy coagulates into electrons away in this inner space, looming in vague and protons which are thrown off in never- gigantic splendor . . . ending streams from the rim of the vortex. “Good God!” said Ezra Gurney and it “They form the shining haze that fills was a prayer. “Then that—that . . .” Curt this hollow around the Birthplace. Then, Newton’s eyes were alight with a strange farther out, they unite to form the atoms of glow. “Yes—the Birthplace.” cosmic dust. The pressure of radiation The hazy space within the denser cloud forces them on across the galaxy. And out was vast. And at its center bulked and of them new worlds are made.” gleamed and shifted an enigmatic glory—a Ezra Gurney shivered. He did not speak. colossal spinning spiral of white radiance. “Curtis!” Simon's voice was loud with a Its whirling arms spanned millions of miles kind of warning and Curt Newton started, and it uttered cosmic lightnings of leaning back in his seat and turning again radiation that lanced out through the haze. to the controls of the Comet. His face had Beating heart of the universe, fiery tightened and his eyes were veiled. womb that spawned the stuff of worlds, A awesome epicenter of cosmos! Cloaked ND the ship sped on across that vast and shrouded by the dense black cloud of hollow in the heart of the dark cloud. its own making, safe behind its ramparts of And swift as its flight was it seemed only terrible whirlpools and the wild tide-runs to creep slowly, slowly, toward the misty of untamed matter fresh from creation, it wheel of radiance. Pale witch- fires danced flamed across its millions of miles of along its hull, growing brighter until the space, shaped like a spiral nebula, metal was enwrapped in veils of flame, spinning, whirling, sending forth its seed to tenuous, cold and having about them an the farthest corners of the galaxy. eerie quality of life. The Comet was And to Ezra Gurney, cowering in his double-shielded against the radiation but seat and staring at that far-off misty glory, even so Ezra Gurney could feel the echoes it seemed that the eyes of men were not of that terrible force in his own flesh. meant to see nor their minds to The flaming arms of the Birthplace comprehend this shining Birthplace. reached wider and wider across space. The “Surely,” he whispered, “surely we're not radiance deepened, became a supernal going into that!” brilliance that seared the flinching Curt Newton nodded. He had still that eyeballs. The ship began to be shaken now strange look in his eyes, a look almost and again by subtle tremors as the farthest 10 edges of out-thrown currents touched it itself, a calm at the very center of cosmic and passed by. storm. Ezra shut his teeth hard to keep from Dazzled, half- stunned, Ezra heard screaming. He had been driven once too Simon saying, “In here at the center is only close to the Sun and he had looked hard one world—the world of the Watchers, into the depths of the atomic furnace that where—” was about to swallow him. He had not then Curt Newton, leaning forward, known one tenth of the fear that he knew interrupted with a strange low cry. now. “Simon, look! Look! There are other Slitting his eyes against the glare he worlds here now—worlds and Suns and—” could make out the central sphere from His voice seemed strangled by a surprise which the spiral arms curved out, a and terror too great for utterance. gigantic vortex of flaming force, the Ezra strained desperately to regain use wheel- hub of the galaxy. The Comet was of his dazzled eyes. As they began to clear plunging straight toward it and there was he too peered tautly forward. At first what nothing he could do to stop it, nothing . . . he saw did not seem so terrifying. Here, in Curt sent the ship driving in between the wide calm space at the heart of the two of the sweeping arms. Tidal-waves, Birthplace, there was a cluster of Suns and torrents of energy picked them up and planets. flung them, a leaf in the cosmic millrace, Ruby Suns, flaring like new blood, toward the grip of a curving arm that green and white and somber smoky-gold burned and seethed with all the ultimate Suns! Planets and moons that circled the fires of hell. And Curt fought the controls changing Suns in sweeping trains, and tore away again, heading in, heading themselves ever changing! Comets that in. . . shot in living light between the worlds, The central sphere of force loomed up meteor swarms rushing and wheeling, an like a wall of flame higher than all the astronomical phantasmagoria enclosed skies of space, and then they were in it. within this comparatively little space! It was as though a million Suns had “You said there were no worlds but one exploded. The force and fire took the here,” Ezra began, bewildered. Comet and whirled it tumbling away “There were none.” Curt's face was through a blind and terrible violence. Ezra deathly, and something in it struck at sagged half- conscious in his seat and he Ezra’s heart. “There were none but that thought that he had come a long, long way little blue world—that alone.” to die. No ship, no body, could live for Ezra glimpsed it at the center of the long in this. strange, close-packed cluster—a little blue The forces of the cosmic centrifuge planet that was a geometrically perfect would tear their substance, powder it to sphere. atoms and then still down into the fine raw “The powers of the Watchers are stuff of atoms, send it out to join with the there—the instruments by which they black dust, to begin the timeless pilgrimage could tap the Birthplace itself,” Curt was across the empty spaces, to be built at last saying hoarsely. “And Garrand has been into the foundations of some new world to there with those instruments for days.” circle an alien Sun. Human, robot and A comprehension so monstrous that his android, they would all be one in the end. mind recoiled from it came to Ezra The Comet crashed suddenly clear of Gurney. “You mean that Garrand . . .” that hellish tempest of light and force into He could not finish, could not say it. It quiet space. Into a space enclosed by the was not a thing that could be said in any spinning central sphere of the Birthplace sane universe. 11 Curt Newton said it. “Garrand by The Comet sped low across the curving tapping the Birthplace, has created the plain. For a time there was nothing but the Suns and worlds and comets and meteors blank expanse of blue—what was it, glass of that cluster. He has fallen victim to the or rock or jewel-stone or some substance old allurement, the strongest in the new in the universe? Above them the little universe.” suns with their planets wheeled and shone, “As you almost fell victim once!” laced about with the fire of comets, and Simon Wright warned. above those again was the golden sky of “Can a man make worlds?” Ezra felt the Birthplace. Curt’s face, bent forward shaken and sick inside. “Curt, no—this toward the blue horizon, was intense and thing—” pale and somehow alien. “One who can harness the Birthplace “There it is!” cried Otho, and Curt can create at will !” Curt exclaimed. “And nodded. Ahead there were the tips of the instruments of the Watchers do harness slender spires flashing in the light and a it!” gleam and glow of faceted surfaces that A kind of madness had come over him. made a web of radiance like the aura Under his hands the Comet leaped forward sometimes seen in dreams. The spires at terrible speed. Ezra heard him talking, lifted into graceful height, shaped whether to the others or himself he never themselves into the form of a city. knew. Walls of the same translucent blue “There is a balance of forces—always a enclosed the towers and in the center, balance! It cannot be tampered with too rising high above them all, there was a much. The Watchers left a warning, a plain citadel, a cathedral- form as massive and as and dreadful warning.” delicate as the castles that sometimes stand The ship rushed forward toward the upon the tops of clouds on Earth. And it distant small blue world, careening wildly was dead, the blue and graceful city. The through the unholy stars and worlds and walls, the streets, the flying arches that comets whose creation had blasphemed spanned the upper levels of the towers, all against the natural universe. were silent and deserted. “Garrand’s ship,” said Curt and Ezra saw it on the plain before the city, an ugly dark intruder on this world that had not CHAPTER IV been made for men. Curt set the Comet down beside it. Power of the Watchers There was air on this planet, for the Watchers had been oxygen-breathers even though they were n human. The lock of ot T HE blue world shimmered in the light Garrand’s ship stood open but there was no of the monstrous aurora, a perfect life nor movement that Curt could see. jewel, with no height of mountain nor “It seems deserted,” he said, “but we’d roughness of natural growth to mar its better make sure.” symmetry. Its surface showed a gloss that Ezra roused himself. He went out with made Ezra think of porcelain or the deep the others and somehow the mere act of gleam of polished lapis. moving and the possibility of facing a “The Watchers made it long ago,” said human and comprehensible danger was a Curt. “They made it out of the forces of the relief, almost a pleasure. He walked beside Birthplace and it was their outpost in this Curt with Otho beyond him. Their boots universe, where they studied the secrets of slipped and rang on the glassy surface. creation. There exists a city . . .” Apart from that there was no sound. The city brooded and was still. 12 H They went through the open airlock into E GOT up. It was hard for him to the other ship. There did not seem to be rise, hard to stand. It was as though anything to fear, but they moved with the fear had eaten the bones away inside him, caution of long habit. Ezra found that he dissolved the strength from his muscles, was waiting, hoping for action, for attack. leaving him only a hulk, a receptacle for He needed some escape valve for the terror. His eyes burned at them. terrors that had grown within him during “You know me,” he said. “You know this flight into the heart of the universe. my kind. You can guess why I came with But the narrow corridors were empty and Garrand to get the secret of the Birthplace, nothing stirred behind the bulkhead doors. what I was going to do with it afterward. I Then, in the main cabin, they found a didn't figure Garrand would get in my way. man. I needed his brains, all right, but there He was sitting on the padded bench would come a time when I wouldn't need formed by the tops of the lockers along one them anymore.” He made a gesture, as of wall. He did not move when they came in brushing away an insect with his hand. except to lift his head and look at them. He “As easy as that.” He began to laugh again was a big man, of a breed that Ezra Gurney and it was more weeping than laughter. knew very well, having fought them all his “Stop it!” said Curt and Herrick stopped life across the Solar System. But the quite obediently. He looked at Curt as hardness had go ne out of him now. The though a thought had just come to him, strong lines of his face had sagged and creeping through the fear-webs that softened and his eyes held only shrouded his brain. hopelessness and fear. He had been “You can get me out of here,” he said. drinking but he was not drunk. There was no threat in his voice, only “You’re too late,” he said. “Way too pleading, the voice of a man caught in late.” quicksand and crying for release. “It's no Curt went and stood before him. use going after Garrand. He’ll die in there “You’re Herrick,” he said. “Are you anyway. He won't eat or sleep, he's gone alone?” beyond those things, but whatever he “Oh, yes,” said Herrick. “I’m alone. thinks he is he’s human and he'll die. Just There were Sperry and Forbin but they’re go! Take me aboard your ship and go!” dead now.” Herrick had not shaved for “No,” said Curt. some time. The black stubble on his jaw Herrick sat down again on the bench. was flecked with white. He ran his hand “No,” he whispered. “You wouldn't. across it and his fingers trembled. “I You're as mad as he is.” wouldn’t be here now,” he said, “but I Simon said, “Curtis . . .” couldn’t run the whirls alone. I couldn’t He had remained in the shadowy take this ship clear back to Earth alone. I background, listening, but now he came couldn't do anything but sit and wait.” forward and spoke and Curt turned on him. Curt said, “Where's Garrand?” “No!” he said again. “I can’t go away Herrick laughed. It was not pleasant and leave a madman there to play with the laughter. “You know where he is. Go in forces of the Birthplace till he dies!” and get him. Make him come out. That’s Simon was silent for a time and then he how Sperry and Forbin died, trying to said slowly, “There is truth in what you say make him. I don’t know why I’m alive but only part of it. And I am sorry, myself. I don’t know if I want to be alive Curtis—for I am no more proof against this after what I’ve seen.” madness than you. Even less, perhaps, than you. “I shall stay out here with Grag to guard the ships and Herrick.” His lens- like eyes 13 turned upon Ezra Gurney. “I think that to Garrand as we can before he kno ws you, of all of us, will resist the lure most we're here.” strongly. You are like Herrick, a man of “Where is he?” demanded Ezra for the your hands—and Herrick, who came to city was utterly dead and still. Curt pointed steal the s ecret, felt only terror when he to the citadel. found it.” “In there.” He said no more but Ezra knew what he They made their way as silently as they meant. Simon was giving Curt Newton into could along the blue translucent street. his hands to save him from some High above them the slender spires made destruction which Ezra did not understand. soft bell- notes where the wind touched There was a coldness around Ezra's heart them and the crystal spans thrummed like and a sickness in his belly and in his mind muted harps. And the shimmering castle a great wish that he had never left Earth. loomed close before them and the strange Curt said to Herrick, “Go to my ship and stars sparkled in the golden sky. Ezra wait. When we leave you'll go with us.” Gurney was afraid. Herrick shook his head. His eyes lifted There was a portal, tall and simply slowly to Curt Newton's and dropped made, with an unknown symbol cut above again. He said, “Yo u'll never leave.” it. They passed it, treading softly, and Ezra left the ship with Curt and Otho stood within a vast cathedral vault that and he was sorry that Herrick had said soared upward until the tops of the walls those last three words. were lost in a golden haze and Ezra They walked again across the ringing realized that it was open to the sky. glassy plain, this time toward the city wall The floor was of the same blue and the tall gateway that was in it. The substance as the city and in the center of it, leaves of the portal stood open and there under the open vault, was a massive was a look about them as though they had oblong block almost like a gigantic altar not been touched or closed for more ages except that its top was set with hundreds of than Ezra could think about. He and Otho little, shining keys. Beside this block stood passed through them, following Curt. Garrand. He was not looking at it nor at the Beyond, at a little distance, were two dark two men and the android who had entered. statues facing each other across the way. He was looking upward into that distant Ezra looked at them and caught his breath sky and through the opening Ezra could in sharply. see the glittering of stars. Garrand was “The Watchers?” he whispered. “Where smiling. they like that? But what were they then?” Curt Newton walked out across the Otho said, “They came from another floor. universe. Simon thought they must have “Don’t came any closer,” said Garrand been liquescent from the formless structure mildly. “Just where you are—that’s close of their bodies.” enough.” Out of each amorphous figure stared Curt stopped. Otho had begun to edge two round yellow eyes, full of light from away along the curve of the wall very the glowing sky and uncannily lifelike. slowly, like a drifting shadow. Ezra stood a Ezra shuddered and hurried by, glancing as little behind Curt and to one side. he did so at the strangely inscribed letters G upon the bases of the statues. He assumed ARRAND turned toward them and that that was the warning Curt had referred for the first time Ezra saw his face to and he did not want to enquire too quite clearly. Unshaven and deathly white, closely into it. its cheeks and temples sunken with hunger “Go quietly,” Curt said. “Two men have and exhaustion, its eyes dark and burning, already died here. We want to get as close there was a beauty about it that had never 14 been there before, something sublime and He flung up his hand, his fingers glorious and calm, as a sea is calm or a crooked. He said loudly, “Garrand, I warn frozen river, with the potentials of you—” destruction sleeping in it. And Ezra His gesture had been both a feint to understood the danger that Simon had draw attention, a signal. A signal that sent spoken of in regard to Curt. He understood Otho lunging toward the oblong altar. now what the power that was here could do The phenomenal swiftness of the to a man. android, the reaction speed of nerves and “So, after all, you followed me,” muscles that were not human, made Otho's Garrand said. “Well, it doesn't matter movement almost blurring to the eye. But now.” He stepped behind the block that Garrand saw and with a low cry he pressed was like an altar, so that it was between the keys. him and Curt. To Ezra, in the next moment, the air Curt said quietly, “You must leave here, around them seemed suddenly charged Garrand. You'll have to leave some time, with power. The golden haze spun about you know. Yo u're only human.” him, darkened, thickened, all in a “Am I?” Garrand laughed. His hand heartbeat. He felt the imminent lightly caressed the bank of little shining materialization of an agency of destruction keys. “Am I? I was once. I was a little drawn from the great matrix of force about physicist who thought adding to scientific them. knowledge supremely important and I stole He glimpsed through the thickening and risked my life to come here for more haze Otho pulling Garrand back from the knowledge.” His eyes lit up. “I came altar. He saw Curt leaping in, his face searching for a scientific secret and I found desperate and raising the depressed keys. the source of godhead!” And Ezra felt the half- materialized “So now, because you’ve tampered with shadowy force around him melting back the Watcher’s powers and tapped the into nothingness. “What—” he stammered, Birthplace, you’re a god?” Curt’s tone was still standing frozen. ironic but Ezra could see the sweat “Death,” said Curt. “As to the form of it standing out on his forehead. who knows but Garrand? Anyway, it's over Garrand took no offence. He was now.” His voice was unsteady and his armored by an egocentric emotion so great hands shook on the keys. He looked down. that he merely smiled wearily and said, Garrand had gone limp in Otho's arms. “You can go now—all of you. I dislike Ezra thought at first that he was dead and chattering. I dislike it so much that I will then he saw the shallow breathing, the faint quite willingly call destruction in here to twitching of the mouth. engulf you unless you go.” “Hunger and exhaustion,” said Curt. His fingers had ceased straying, had “Strain. He was already at the end of his come to rest on certain keys. Ezra Gurney rope. Get him back to the ship, Otho, and felt a slow freezing of his flesh. He have Simon take care of him.” whispered hoarsely, “You'll have to kill Otho lifted the unconscious man him, Curt.” without effort but he did not yet move He knew the swiftness with which away. “Aren't you coming, Curt?” Newton could draw and fire the weapon at “Not yet.” He glanced upward through his belt. But Curt made no move. the opening at the brilliant stars that “Can I fire into that bank of controls?” swarmed where no stars ought to be. “I Curt muttered. “Otho’s speed is our only can’t leave this imbalance at the heart of chance.” the Birthplace. The Watchers were careful about that. They built their one small planet at the exact center of stress, where it 15 wouldn’t upset anything. But those cosmic hammers beat he never knew. But creations of Garrand's—I don't dare leave there came a time when everything was them here, Otho.” still and he looked up and saw Curt Still Otho did not move and Curt said, standing there with his hands motionless “Go on, Otho. Garrand needs help.” on the keys and his head strained back so that he could search the farthest reaches of S LOWLY and reluctantly the android the sky. turned and as he did so he looked at He spoke and Curt did not answer. He Ezra, a look of warning, a pleading look. touched him and spoke again, and it was Then, he went out, carrying Garrand. like speaking to a statue except that under Curt Newton bent over the keys. “I his fingers he could feel the subtle tremors haven’t forgotten,” he whispered to of Curt's hard flesh, the taut quivering. himself. “How could anyone ever forget ?” “Curt!” he cried out. And Curt very He touched the gleaming keys, not slowly lowered his head and looked at him pressing them, just touching them lightly with a kind of amazement in his eyes, as and feeling the power that was in them, the though he had forgotten Ezra Gurney. unimaginable control of matter. “Is it finished, Curt?” Ezra said hoarsely, “What are you “Yes. It's finished.” going to do?” “Then come away.” Curt looked upward to where the little Newton's gaze, the unfamiliar gaze that suns swam in the golden haze, the little did not see small things like men but suns that could create havoc in this cosmic looked on larger distances, slipped away to womb where only the seed of matter the banks of keys and upward to the sky belonged. again. “Watch,” he said. “I am going to “In a moment,” he said. “In just a dissolve what Garrand created.” moment.” Ezra watched. Slowly, carefully, Curt Two red bars burned across the bones pressed a certain pattern on the keys and of his cheeks and the rest of his face was around a ruby star waves and bands of like marble. Ezra saw in it the beginning of golden force began to flicker like faint the exaltation, the terrible beauty that had auroras. They grew and strengthened and marked the face of Garrand. Curt smiled became streams of raw electrons, pouring and the sinews of his hands moved their substance into the little Sun. delicately as he stroked his fingers across Ezra shielded his eyes, but not soon the keys. enough. The star had become a nova, but “The worlds that I could make,” he without the second, the collapsed stage of whispered. “Garrand was only a little man. novas. The fury of electronic force I could create things he never dreamed of.” launched upon it from outside in this “Curt!” cried Ezra in a panic. “Come universal vortex of such forces had swept away!” But his voice was swallowed up in away each fragment of the exploding dreams and Curt whispered very softly, “I atoms to return them to the parent cloud. wouldn't keep them. I would dissolve them The ruby star had ceased to exist and its afterward. But I could create . . .” worlds had vanished with it. His fingers were forming a pattern on Swifter now, more surely, Curt's hands the keys. Ezra looked down at his gnarled flashed across the keys. And Ezra Gurney old hands and knew that they were not cowered beside the altar, blinded, stunned, strong enough. He looked at his gun and shaken by the savage explosions of far- knew that he could not use it in any way. distant matter, riven and burst apart. Searching desperately for a way to pierce How long he crouched there while the through the dreams he cried, “Could you great lights flared in the sky and the create another Earth?” 16 For awhile he was not sure that Curt had Curt looked at him. “You're sure that heard him, not sure but that he was beyond you expunged every memory of the Birth- hearing. Then a vaguely startled look came place?” into Curt's eyes and he said, “What?” “Absolutely sure. I used the scanner to “Could you create another Earth, Curt? block every memory-path on that subject— Could you put the mountains and the seas and checked by questioning them together and build the cities and fill them hypnotically. They know nothing of the with men and women and the voices of Birthplace. You'll have to have a story children? Could you create another Otho or ready for them.” Grag or Simon?” Curt nodded. “We picked them up out Curt slowly looked down at his fingers, here in deep space when their ship cracked curved and hungry on the waiting keys, up in cosmic ray research. That fits the and a kind of horror flashed across his circumstances—they’ll never doubt it.” face. He snatched his hands away and spun Ezra shivered a little. Even now the around, turning his back to the altar. He blocking of part of a man's memories, the looked sick, and shamed, but the dreams taking away forever of a bit of his were no longer shadowing his face, and experience, seemed an eerie thing to do. Ezra began to breathe again. Curt Newton saw his shiver and “Thanks, Ezra,” he said hoarsely. “Now understood it. He said, “It doesn’t harm let's go. Let's go, while I can.” them, Ezra—and it's necessary.” “Very necessary, if the secret of the T HE black cloud lay behind them and Birthplace is not to get out again,” said the Comet fled away from it like a Simon. frightened thing, back through the great There was a little silence among them blazing clusters of Suns that had now no and the ship crawled on and on through the terrors for them. Curt Newton sat silently cosmic glare and gloom. Ezra saw that the at the controls and his face was so somber shadow on Newton’s face brooding that Ezra Gurney did not venture deepened as he looked out through the to speak. wilderness of Suns and nebulae toward the Ezra looked ahead because he did not far, far spark of Sol. want to look back into the main cabin. He “But someday,” Curt said slowly, knew that what Simon was doing there was “someday not too far in the future, many perfectly harmless and utterly necessary men will be pushing out through these but there was something so uncanny about spaces. They'll find the Birthplace sooner it that he did not want to see it being done. or later. And then what?” He had looked in once and seen Simon Simon said, “We will not be here when hovering over the strange projector that that happens.” Grag and Otho had rigged above the heads “But they’ll do it. And what will happen of the drugged unconscious Garrand and when they do?” Herrick. He had come away from there Simon had no answer for that nor had quickly. Ezra Gurney. And Curt spoke again, his He sat unspeaking beside Curt, voice heavy with foreboding. watching the great clusters wheel slowly “I have sometimes thought that life, past them until at last Simon Wright came human life, intelligent life, is merely a gliding into the control-room. deadly agent by which a stellar system “It is done,” said Simon. “Garrand and achieves its own doom in a cosmic cycle Herrick will not wake for many hours. far vaster and stranger than anyone has When they do they won't remember.” dreamed. For see—stars and planets are born from primal nothingness and they cool and the cooling worlds spawn life and 17 life grows to ever higher levels of Simon said slowly, “That is a terrible intelligence and power until . . .” thought, Curtis. But I deny its inevitability. There was an ironical twist to Curt’s lips Long ago the Watchers found the as he paused and then went on “. . . until Birthplace, yet they did not try to use its the life of that world becomes intelligent powers.” enough to tap the energies of the cosmos! “We are not like the Watchers, we When that happens is it inevitable that men,” Curt said bitterly. “You saw what it fallible mortals should use those energies did to Garrand and to me.” so disastrously that they finally destroy “I know,” said Simon. “But perhaps their own worlds and stars? Are life and men will be as wise as the Watchers were intelligence merely a lethal seed planted in by the time they find the Birthplace. each universe, a seed that must inevitably Perhaps they too will then be powerful destroy that universe?” enough to renounce power. We can only hope.” 18