Star Maker, Olaf Stapledon [top rated books of all time .TXT] 📗

visibly fading as clouds

fade; but giving place to new generations of stars. The heart of the

nebula was now condensing into a smaller bulk, more clearly defined. It

was a huge, congested globe of brilliance. Here and there throughout the

disc knots and lumps of light were the embryonic star-clusters. The

whole nebula was strewn with these balls of thistledown, these feathery,

sparkling, fairy decorations, each one in fact pregnant with a small

universe of stars.

 

The galaxy, for such it could now be named, continued visibly to whirl

with hypnotic constancy. Its tangled tresses of star-streams were spread

abroad on the darkness. Now it was like a huge broad-brimmed white

sombrero, the crown a glowing mass, the brim a filmy expanse of stars.

It was a cardinal’s hat, spinning. The two long whirling tassels on the

brim were two long spiraling star-streams. Their frayed ex tremities had

broken away and become sub-galaxies, revolving about the main galactic

system. The whole, like a spinning top, swayed; and, as it tilted before

us, the brim appeared as an ever narrower ellipse, till presently it was

edge-on, and the outermost fringe of it, composed of non-luminous

matter, formed a thin, dark, knotted line across the glowing inner

substance of nebula and stars-Peering, straining to see more precisely

the texture of this shimmering and nacrous wonder, this largest of all

the kinds of objects in the cosmos, we found that our new vision, even

while embracing the whole galaxy and the distant galaxies, apprehended

each single star as a tiny disc separated from its nearest neighbors

much as a cork on the Arctic Ocean would be separated from another cork

on the Antarctic. Thus, in spite of the nebulous and opalescent beauty

of its general form, the galaxy also appeared to us as a void sprinkled

with very sparse scintillations.

 

Observing the stars more closely, we saw that while they streamed along

in companies like shoals of fishes, their currents sometimes

interpenetrated. Then seemingly the stars of the different streams,

crossing one another’s paths, pulled at one another, moving in great

sweeping curves as they passed from one neighbor’s influence to another.

Thus, in spite of their remoteness each from each, the stars often

looked curiously like minute living creatures taking cognizance of one

another from afar. Sometimes they swung hyperbolically round one another

and away, or, more rarely, united to form binaries.

 

So rapidly did time pass before us that aeons were packed into moments.

We had seen the first stars condense from the nebular tissue as ruddy

giants, though in the remote view inconceivably minute. A surprising

number of these, perhaps through the centrifugal force of their

rotation, were burst asunder to form binaries, so that, increasingly,

the heaven was peopled by these waltzing pairs. Meanwhile, the giant

stars slowly shrank and gathered brightness. They passed from red to

yellow, and on to dazzling white and blue. While other young giants

condensed around them, they shrank still further, and their color

changed once more to yellow and to smoldering red. Presently we saw the

eldest of the stars one by one extinguished like sparks from a fire. The

incidence of this mortality increased, slowly but steadily. Sometimes a

“nova” flashed out and faded, outshining for a moment all its myriad

neighbors. Here and there a “variable” pulsated with inconceivable

rapidity. Now and again we saw a binary and a third star approach one

another so closely that one or other of the group reached out a filament

of its substance toward its partner. Straining our supernatural vision,

we saw these filaments break and condense into planets. And we were awed

by the infinitesimal size and the rarity of these seeds of life among

the lifeless host of the stars.

 

But the stars themselves gave an irresistible impression of vitality.

Strange that the movements of these merely physical things, these mere

fire-balls, whirling and traveling according to the geometrical laws of

their minutest particles, should seem so vital, so questing. But then

the whole galaxy was itself so vital, so like an organism, with its

delicate tracery of star-streams, like the streams within a living cell;

and its extended wreaths, almost like feelers; and its nucleus of light.

Surely this great and lovely creature must be alive, must have

intelligent experience of itself and of things other than it.

 

In the tide of these wild thoughts we checked our fancy, remembering

that only on the rare grains called planets can life gain foothold, and

that all this wealth of restless jewels was but a waste of fire.

 

With rising affection and longing we directed our attention more

minutely toward the earliest planetary grains as they condensed out of

the whirling filaments of flame, to become at first molten drops that

span and pulsated, then grew rock-encrusted, ocean-filmed, and swathed

in atmosphere. Our piercing sight observed their shallow waters ferment

with life, which soon spread into their oceans and continents. A few of

these early worlds we saw waken to intelligence of human rank; and very

soon these were in the throes of the great struggle for the spirit, from

which still fewer emerged victorious.

 

Meanwhile new planetary births, rare among the stars, yet, in all,

thousands upon thousands, had launched new worlds and new biographies.

We saw the Other Earth, with its recurrent glories and shames, and its

final suffocation. We saw the many other humanesque worlds, Echinoderm,

Centaurian, and so on. We saw Man on his little Earth blunder through

many alternating phases of dullness and lucidity, and again abject

dullness. From epoch to epoch his bodily shape changed as a cloud

changes. We watched him in his desperate struggle with Martian invaders;

and then, after a moment that included further ages ofdarkness and of

light, we saw him driven, by dread of the moon’s downfall, away to

inhospitable Venus. Later still, after an aeon that was a mere sigh in

the lifetime of the cosmos, he fled before the exploding sun to Neptune,

there to sink back into mere animality for further aeons again. But then

he climbed once more and reached his finest intelligence, only to be

burnt up like a moth in a flame by irresistible catastrophe.

 

All this long human story, most passionate and tragic in the living, was

but an unimportant, a seemingly barren and negligible effort, lasting

only for a few moments in the life of the galaxy. When it was over, the

host of the planetary systems still lived on, with here and there a

casualty, and here and there among the stars a new planetary birth, and

here and there a fresh disaster.

 

Before and after man’s troubled life we saw other humanesque races rise

in scores and hundreds, of which a mere handful was destined to waken

beyond man’s highest spiritual range, to play a part in the galactic

community of worlds. These we now saw from afar on their little

Earthlike planets, scattered among the huge drift of the star-streams,

struggling to master all those world-problems, social and spiritual,

which man in our “modern” era is for the first time confronting.

Similarly, we saw again the many other kinds of races, nautiloid,

submarine, avian, composite, and the rare symbiotics, and still rarer

plant-like beings. And of every kind only a few, if any, won through to

Utopia, and took part in the great communal enterprise of worlds. The

rest fell by the way.

 

From our remote look-out we now saw in one of the islanded sub-galaxies

the triumph of the Symbiotics. Here at last was the germ of a true

community of worlds. Presently the stars of this islet-universe began to

be girdled with living pearls, till the whole sub-galaxy was alive with

worlds. Meanwhile in the main system arose that flagrant and contagious

insanity of empire, which we had already watched in detail. But what had

before appeared as a war of titans, in which great worlds maneuvered in

space with inconceivable speed, and destroyed one another’s populations

in holocausts, was now seen as the jerky motion of a few microscopic

sparks, a few luminous animalcules, surrounded by the indifferent

stellar hosts.

 

Presently, however, we saw a star blaze up and destroy its planets. The

Empires had murdered something nobler than themselves. There was a

second murder, and a third. Then, under the influence of the sub-galaxy,

the imperial madness faded, and empire crumbled. And soon our fatigued

attention was held by the irresistible coming of Utopia throughout the

galaxy. This was visible to us chiefly as a steady increase of

artificial planets. Star after star blossomed with orbit after crowded

orbit of these vital jewels, these blooms pregnant with the spirit.

Constellation after constellation, the whole galaxy Became visibly alive

with myriads of worlds. Each world, peopled with its unique,

multitudinous race of sensitive individual intelligences united in true

community, was itself a living thing, possessed of a common spirit. And

each system of many populous orbits was itself a communal being. And the

whole galaxy, knit in a single telepathic mesh, was a single intelligent

and ardent being, the common spirit, the “I,” of all its countless,

diverse, and ephemeral individuals. This whole vast community looked now

beyond itself toward its fellow galaxies. Resolved to pursue the

adventure of life and of spirit in the cosmical, the widest of all

spheres, it was in constant telepathic communication with its fellows;

and at the same time, conceiving all kinds of strange practical

ambitions, it began to avail itself of the energies of its stars upon a

scale hitherto unimagined. Not only was every solar system now

surrounded by a gauze of light traps, which focused the escaping solar

energy for intelligent use, so that the whole galaxy was dimmed, but

many stars that were not suited to be suns were disintegrated, and

rifled of their prodigious stores of subatomic energy.

 

Suddenly our attention was held by an event which even at a distance was

visibly incompatible with Utopia. A star encircled by planets exploded,

destroying all its rings of worlds, and sinking afterwards into wan

exhaustion. Another and another, and yet others in different regions of

the galaxy, did likewise.

 

To inquire into the cause of these startling disasters we once more, by

an act of volition, dispersed ourselves to our stations among the many

worlds.