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

beyond its

comprehension.

 

To return to my story. How long I spent in debate with myself I do not

know, but soon after I had made my decision, the absolute darkness was

pierced once more by the stars. I was apparently at rest, for stars were

visible in every direction, and their color was normal.

 

But a mysterious change had come over me. I soon discovered that, by

merely willing to approach a star, I could set myself in motion toward

it, and at such a speed that I must have traveled much faster than

normal light. This, as I knew very well, was physically impossible.

Scientists had assured me that motion faster than the speed of light was

meaningless. I inferred that my motion must therefore be in some manner

a mental, not a physical phenomenon, that I was enabled to take up

successive viewpoints without physical means of locomotion. It seemed to

me evident, too, that the light with which the stars were now revealed

to me was not normal, physical light; for I noticed that my new and

expeditious means of travel took no effect upon the visible colors of

the stars. However fast I moved, they retained their diamond hues,

though all were somewhat brighter and more tinted than in normal vision.

 

No sooner had I made sure of my new power of locomotion than I began

feverishly to use it. I told myself that I was embarking on a voyage of

astronomical and metaphysical research; but already my craving for the

Earth was distorting my purpose. It turned my attention unduly toward

the search for planets, and especially for planets of the terrestrial

type.

 

At random I directed my course toward one of the brighter of the near

stars. So rapid was my advance that certain lesser and still nearer

luminaries streamed past me like meteors. I swung close to the great

sun, insensitive to its heat. On its mottled surface, in spite of the

pervading brilliance, I could see, with my miraculous vision, a group of

huge dark sun-spots, each one a pit into which a dozen Earths could have

been dropped. Round the star’s limb the excrescences of the chromosphere

looked like fiery trees and plumes and prehistoric monsters, atiptoe or

awing, all on a globe too small for them. Beyond these the pale corona

spread its films into the darkness. As I rounded the star in hyperbolic

flight I searched anxiously for planets, but found none. I searched

again, meticulously, tacking and veering near and far. In the wider

orbits a small object like the earth might easily be overlooked. I found

nothing but meteors and a few insubstantial comets. This was the more

disappointing because the star seemed to be of much the same type as the

familiar sun. Secretly I had hoped to discover not merely planets but

actually the Earth.

 

Once more I struck out into the ocean of space, heading for another near

star. Once more I was disappointed. I approached yet another lonely

furnace. This too was unattended by the minute grains that harbor life.

 

I now hurried from star to star, a lost dog looking for its master. I

rushed hither and thither, intent on finding a sun with planets, and

among those planets my home. Star after star I searched, but far more I

passed impatiently, recognizing at once that they were too large and

tenuous and young to be Earth’s luminary. Some were vague ruddy giants

broader than the orbit of Jupiter; some, smaller and more definite, had

the brilliance of a thousand suns, and their color was blue. I had been

told that our Sun was of average type, but I now discovered many more of

the great youngsters than of the shrunken, yellowish middle-aged.

Seemingly I must have strayed into a region of late stellar

condensation.

 

I noticed, but only to avoid them, great clouds of dust, huge as

constellations, eclipsing the star-streams; and tracts of palely glowing

gas, shining sometimes by their own light, sometimes by the reflected

light of stars. Often these nacrous cloud-continents had secreted within

them a number of vague pearls of light, the embryos of future stars. I

glanced heedlessly at many star-couples, trios, and quartets, in which

more or less equal partners waltz in close union. Once, and once only, I

came on one of those rare couples in which one partner is no bigger than

a mere Earth, but massive as a whole great star, and very brilliant. Up

and down this region of the galaxy I found here and there a dying star,

somberly smoldering; and here and there the encrusted and extinguished

dead. These I could not see till I was almost upon them, and then only

dimly, by the reflected light of the whole heaven. I never approached

nearer to them than I could help, for they were of no interest to me in

my crazy yearning for the Earth. Moreover, they struck a chill into my

mind, prophesying the universal death. I was comforted, however, to find

that as yet there were so few of them.

 

I found no planets. I knew well that the birth of planets was due to the

close approach of two or more stars, and that such accidents must be

very uncommon. I reminded myself that stars with planets must be as rare

in the galaxy as gems among the grains of sand on the sea-shore. What

chance had I of coming upon one? I began to lose heart. The appalling

desert of darkness and barren fire, the huge emptiness so sparsely

pricked with scintillations, the colossal futility of the whole

universe, hideously oppressed me. And now, an added distress, my power

of locomotion began to fail. Only with a great effort could I move at

all among the stars, and then but slowly, and ever more slowly. Soon I

should find myself pinned fast in space like a fly in a collection; but

lonely, eternally alone. Yes, surely this was my special Hell.

 

I pulled myself together. I reminded myself that even if this was to be

my fate, it was no great matter. The Earth could very well do without

me. And even if there was no other living world anywhere in the cosmos,

still, the Earth itself had life, and might wake to far fuller life. And

even though I had lost my native planet, still, that beloved world was

real. Besides, my whole adventure was a miracle, and by continued

miracle might I not stumble on some other Earth? I remembered that I had

undertaken a high pilgrimage, and that I was man’s emissary to the

stars.

 

With returning courage my power of locomotion returned. Evidently it

depended on a vigorous and self-detached mentality. My recent mood of

self-pity and earthward-yearning had hampered it.

 

Resolving to explore a new region of the galaxy, where perhaps there

would be more of the older stars and a greater hope of planets, I headed

in the direction of a remote and populous cluster. From the faintness of

the individual members of this vaguely speckled ball of light I guessed

that it must be very far afield. On and on I traveled in the darkness.

As I never turned aside to search, my course through the ocean of space

never took me near enough to any star to reveal it as a disc. The lights

of heaven streamed remotely past me like the lights of distant ships.

After a voyage during which I lost all measure of time I found myself in

a great desert, empty of stars, a gap between two star-streams, a cleft

in the galaxy. The Milky Way surrounded me, and in all directions lay

the normal dust of distant stars; but there were no considerable lights,

save the thistledown of the remote cluster which was my goal.

 

This unfamiliar sky disturbed me with a sense of my increasing

dissociation from my home. It was almost a comfort to note, beyond the

furthest stars of our galaxy, the minute smudges that were alien

galaxies, incomparably more distant than the deepest recesses of the

Milky Way; and to be reminded that, in spite of all my headlong and

miraculous traveling, I was still within my native galaxy, within the

same little cell of the cosmos where she, my life’s friend, still lived.

I was surprised, by the way, that so many of the alien galaxies appeared

to the naked eye, and that the largest was a pale, cloudy mark bigger

than the moon in the terrestrial sky.

 

By contrast with the remote galaxies, on whose appearance all my

voyaging failed to make impression, the star-cluster ahead of me was now

visibly expanding. Soon after I had crossed the great emptiness between

the star-streams, my cluster confronted me as a huge cloud of

brilliants. Presently I was passing through a more populous area, and

then the cluster itself opened out ahead of me, covering the whole

forward sky with its congested lights. As a ship approaching port

encounters other craft, so I came upon and passed star after star. When

I had penetrated into the heart of the cluster, I was in a region far

more populous than any that I had explored. On every side the sky blazed

with suns, many of which appeared far brighter than Venus in the Earth’s

sky. I felt the exhilaration of a traveler who, after an ocean crossing,

enters harbors by night and finds himself surrounded by the lights of a

metropolis. In this congested region, I told myself, many close

approaches must have occurred, many planetary systems must have been

formed. Once more I looked for middle-aged stars of the sun’s type. All

that I had passed hitherto were young giants, great as the whole solar

system. After further searching I found a few likely stars, but none had

planets. I found also many double and triple stars, describing their

incalculable orbits; and great continents of gas, in which new stars

were condensing. At last, at last I found a planetary system. With

almost insupportable hope I circled among these worlds; but all were

greater than Jupiter, and all were molten. Again I hurried from star to

star. I must have visited thousands, but all in vain. Sick and lonely I

fled out of the cluster. It dwindled behind me into a ball of down,

sparkling with dew-drops. In front of me a great tract of darkness

blotted out a section of the Milky Way and the neighboring area of

stars, save for a few near lights which lay between me and the obscuring

opacity. The billowy edges of this huge cloud of gas or dust were

revealed by the glancing rays of bright stars beyond it. The sight moved

me with self-pity; on so many nights at home had I seen the edges of

dark clouds silvered just so by moonlight. But the cloud which now

opposed me could have swallowed not merely whole worlds, not merely

countless planetary systems, but whole constellations.

 

Once more my courage failed me. Miserably I tried to shut out the

immensities by closing my eyes. But I had neither eyes nor eyelids. I

was a disembodied, wandering viewpoint. I tried to conjure up the

little interior of my home, with the curtains drawn and the fire

dancing. I tried to persuade myself that all this horror of darkness and

dis tance and barren incandescence was a dream, that I was dozing by the

fire, that at any moment I might wake, that she would reach over from

her sewing and touch me and smile. But the stars still held me prisoner.

 

Again, though with failing strength, I set about my search. And after I

had wandered from star to star for a period that might have been days or

years or aeons, luck or some