The Bright Ones
The firmament was filled with fire. All else was blotted out, forgotten — the farther stars, the little worlds of men. There was nothing else anywhere but the raging storming beauty of the Sun.
The little wisp of flame that had been a man hung motionless in space, absorbing through every sentient atom of his being the overmastering wonder. He had come up out of shadowed Vulcan into the full destroying light, the unmasked splendor of the burning star that was lord of all the planets.
He had risen toward it, rapidly at first, then more and more slowly as his new and untried perceptions brought home to him the magnitude of the scene. Awe overcame him and he remained poised in mid-flight, struggling with sensations not given to any creature of corporeal form.
He could feel the pressure of light. It came in a headlong rush from out of the boiling cauldron of atomic dissolution, reaching away to unguessed limits of space, and he that had been Curt Newton felt its strength pushing against him.
Particles of raw energy struck the tenuous fires of his new body, with a myriad of bright and tingling shocks. They pleased him and he fed upon them. And he found that he could hear the Sun. It was not hearing as he had known it. There was no medium here to carry sound waves. It was a more subtle thing, an inner pulsation of his own new being.
Yet he heard — the vast solemn savage roar of the never-ending tumult of destruction and rebirth, the hissing scream of world-high tongues of flame, the deep booming thunder of solar continents and seas of fire, shaped eternally out of the maelstrom and eternally sundered, only to be shaped again in different form.
He watched the wheeling of the Sun upon its axis. With a perception that sensed intensely every color of the spectrum he saw the heaving mountains, the seas and plains and storming clouds of fire, as spectral shapes of amethyst and crimson, emerald and gold, barred and streaked with every conceivable shading from palest violet to deepest angry red.
Gradually, lost in the wonder of his new life, his sense of awe abated. He began to feel a sort of power as though the last of his human fetters had fallen away, leaving him completely free. The void was his, the Sun was his. He was beyond harm or fear or death. He was alive and eternal as the stars.
He shot inward toward the Sun and the shimmering veils of the corona wrapped him in a mist of glory.
He was in no hurry. Time had ceased for him. The delicate diamond fires of these upper mists were inexpressibly beautiful. He played among them, a fleck of living golden flame, darting and wheeling like some fabled bird. He saw how the veils of the corona were whipped and shaken as though by great winds, now curling upon themselves in dense amethystine folds, now torn wide to show the sullen chromosphere below.
He dropped down through one of those sudden chasms, countless miles, with the speed of a shaft of light, and plunged into the red obscurity of the chromosphere.
It seemed to him that here was concentrated all the anger of the Sun. Torrents of raging scarlet gases swept by, twisted here and there into blood-red whirlpools the size of a continent, their edges whipped to a burning froth where they chafed against other currents, meeting sometimes head-on in a spout of savage flame as dark as cinnabar.
Elemental rage, the fury of life — the new-born Child of the Sun scudded along on the crimson tides, whirling, dancing, tossing high on the crests, probing the darkest ruby of the whirlpools. Below him still, a vague rolling sphere of fire, lay the photosphere.
He dropped down lower still, and looked upon the surface of the Sun.
Upheaval, chaos, beauty unimaginable, strangeness beyond belief. An immensity of golden flame, denser than those outer layers, writhing, surging, lifting up huge molten ranges that clawed at the crimson sky and then slid down in titanic cataclysm to be lost in a weltering plain of fire.
Cresting waves that could have swallowed worlds raced and ravaged across the face of the Sun, crashing down in wild thundering avalanches, spouting, spuming, unutterably brilliant, majestic beyond any sight given to human eyes.
He watched, and felt the pattern of his new being tremble. His humanity was still too recent for him to look upon that unthinkable Sun-world without awe and fear.
Two great waves, thousand of miles in height, reared up and rushed together across a hollow trough wider than all of Earth. They met and out of that sundering collision was born a prominence that burst upward in a pouring river of flame.
Curt NEWTON felt himself caught in that titanic current. He fought it, finding that he could stand against it, finding a glory in his own new strength. A kind of ecstasy shot through him. He let himself go and the current took him and whirled him up, swift almost as light, past the chromosphere, past the corona, sheer into empty space. He rode it out, wild with exhilaration.
He emerged from the prominence, swooping in a great circle, catching a fleeting glimpse of distant worlds spangled with light, and a memory came to him of his mission here and why he had left his human form to make this pilgrimage into the Sun.
More soberly now he plunged again through the pale mists and the crimson tides and hovered over the photosphere, seeking others of his kind.
Across unthinkable distances he searched and found no one. A terrible loneliness came upon him. He entered an area of storm where the great vortices of the sun-spots whirled and thundered in a maelstrom of electronic currents.
He fled from them, deafened, shaken, and found himself crying out desperately, “Carlin! Carlin! Where are you?”
Crying not with tongue or voice but with the power of his mind. And when he understood that he could speak that way he called again and again, darting this way and that across the burning oceans, heading the vast funnels of the solar storms.
“Carlin! Carlin!”
And someone answered. He heard the voice quite clearly in his mind or the part of his new being that was sensitive to the reception of thought.
“Who calls, little brother?”
Golden bright against the crimson chromosphere above, he saw winging toward him another of the Children of the Sun.
He went to meet the stranger. Wheeling and dancing like two incredible butterflies of flame they hovered above a burning river that ran across the face of the Sun. And they talked.
“Are you — were you Philip Carlin?”
“Philip Carlin? No. In human I was Thardis, chief physicist to Fer Roga, Lord of Vulcan. That was long ago.”
Silence, except for the booming thunders of the Sun.
“Tell me, little brother. You are new here?”
“Yes.”
“Do they still come then, the Bright Ones? Is the portal open still?”
“It has been lost and forgotten for many ages. And then he found it, who was my friend — and he came through. Do you know him, Thardis? Do you know of Philip Carlin?”
“No. My studies keep me much alone. Do you know, little brother, that I have almost attained the boundaries of pure thought? The greatest minds of the Empire said that was impossible. But I shall do it!”
Two flecks of living fire, whirling, tossing on the solar winds above the flaming river. And Thardis said, “What of the Empire? What of Vulcan? Was the portal forbidden and did our scientists forget?”
“It was forbidden”, Newton answered. “And then. .” He told Thardis slowly how the Old Empire had crashed and died, how its far-flung peoples had sunk into barbarism, how only yesterday as time goes in the universe they had climbed back part way up the ladder of knowledge.
He told Thardis many things and most of them were bitter and sad. But even as he told them he knew that to the other they were less than dreams. He had gone too far away into some strange distance of his own.
“So it is all gone”, mused Thardis. “The star-worlds, the captains, the many-throned kings. It is the law. You will learn it here, little brother. You will watch the cycle — birth and death and eternity — repeated forever in the heart of the Sun.”
His tenuous body rippled, poised for flight. “Farewell, little brother. Perhaps we shall meet again.”
“Wait! Wait “ cried Newton. “You do not understand. I can’t remain here. I must find my friend and then go back with him.”
“Go back?” repeated Thardis. “Ah, you are new! Once, I remember, I started to go back.”
His thought was silent for a long while and then it came again with a kind of sad amusement. “The little Sun Child, who is so very new! Come then, I shall help you find your friend.”
He led off across the tortured moving mountains of the Sun, across the lashing burning seas. Newton followed and as Thardis went he called and presently from out of the veils and clouds of fire came two others who joined them.
Thardis asked, “Do you know of one called Carlin? He is new.”
One did not but the other answered, “I know him. He bas gone deep into the inner fires to study the Sun’s life.”
“I will take you to him”, Thardis said to Newton. “Come.”
He dropped swiftly downward into the raging wilderness of flame. And Newton was afraid to follow.
Then he was ashamed. If Carlin had gone that way he could go. He plunged down after the fleeting Thardis.
The crested waves of holocaust reached up and received them and buried them in depths of smoky gold, shot through with gouts and shafts of blazing color. They entered a region of denser matter and to Newton it was like swimming under troubled waters, sensible of the pressure and the awful turmoil, blending his own substance with the medium that held him.
He clung close to Thardis. Gradually as they sank deeper and deeper beneath the surface the golden depths grew quieter, the flashing colors softer. Buried currents ran fiercely like rivers under the sea. Thardis entered one of these, breasting the mighty flowing force as a man walks against the wind, finding exhilaration in the battle.
Newton joined him, and felt his own strength surge in joyous pleasure.
The gold began to fade, gathering the diamond shards of color into itself, lightening, paling. Newton became aware of a glow ahead, more terrible than all the fires he had yet seen — a supernal whiteness so searing in its intensity that even his new senses found it hard to bear.
The patterned energy of his flame-like body was shaken by waves of awful force. He had been afraid before. Now he was beyond fear. He crept after Thardis like a child creeping to the feet of Creation. He would have stopped but Thardis led him on into the inmost solar furnace, into the living heart of the Sun.
And he who had been Philip Carlin was there, wrapped in a silent awe, watching the mystic terrible forges beating out the unthinkable energies of the death and renascence of matter.
Newton had no thought for Carlin now. The awful voices of creation were hammering against his senses, dazing them, numbing them. He shuddered beneath that godlike fury of sound. The stripped and fleeing atoms burst through him, filling him with an exalted pain. He too watched, lost utterly in a cosmic awe of his own.
Atomic change exploded ceaselessly here, thundering, throbbing — hydrogen flashing through all the shifting transformations of the carbon-nitrogen cycle to final helium, the residual energy bursting blindly outward in raving power.
Newton began to be aware of his own danger. He knew that if he stayed too long he would never go again. He was a scientist and this was the ultimate core of learning. He would remain, drunk and fascinated with the lure of knowledge, with the incredible life that could exist in this crucible of energy. He would remain forever, with the other Children of the Sun.
Temptation whispered, “Why go back? Why not remain, a clean, eternal flame, free to learn, free to live?”
He remembered the three who waited for him in the citadel and the promise he had made. And he forced himself with a bitter effort to speak. “Carlin! Philip Carlin!”
The other Sun Child stirred, and asked, “Who calls?”
And when he heard his rapt mind woke to emotion. “Curt Newton? You here? I had almost forgotten.”
Strange meeting of two friends no longer human, in the thundering solar fires! Newton forced himself to think only of his purpose. “I’ve come after you, Carlin! I followed you to bring you back!”
The other’s response was a fierce, instinctive recoil. “No! I will not go back!”
And Carlin’s thought raced eagerly. “Look — look about you! How could I leave? A million years from now, two million, when I have learned all I can. . No, Curt. No scientist could leave this!”
Newton felt the fatal force of that argument. He too felt the irresistible attraction of the undying life that had trapped men here for a million years.
He felt it — too strongly! He knew desperately that he must succumb to it unless he left quickly. The knowledge nerved him to clutch at the one persuasion that might still sway Carlin.
“But if you stay here all the knowledge you have gathered here will be lost forever! The secrets of the Sun, the key to the mysteries of the universe prisoned here with you, never to be known!”
He had been right. It was the one argument that could move this man whose life bad been spent in the gathering and interchange of knowledge. He felt the doubt, the turmoil, in Carlin’s shaken mind. The unwillingness and yet the strong tug of lifetime habits of mind.
The thunders of the Sun’s heart roared about them as Newton poised waiting. And at last, reluctantly, Carlin said “Yes.Yes, I must take back what I have learned. And yet. .”
He burst out, bitter, passionate, “And yet to leave all this!”
“You must, Carlin!”
Another pause. And then, “If I must go let us go at once, Curt!”
Newton became aware then that Thardis still hovered beside them. And Thardis told them, “Come, I will guide you.”
They three went winging upward from the depths of the Sun — swiftly up through the golden many-tinted photosphere, past the angry crimson tides above, high, high, through the whipping veils of the corona into empty space.
DAZED, his shaken senses reeling, Newton perceived across the gulf the tiny semi-molten ball of Vulcan. He fixed upon it, knowing that if he faltered now he was lost.
Thardis said, “Go quickly, little brothers. I know. I too once started back.”
“Come!” cried Newton desperately.
He plunged out across the gulf, swift as a shooting star, and by the very force of his mind he dragged the wavering Carlin with him.
Too much had happened, too much to bear. Newton’s mind was clouded, torn between exaltation and pain of loss, dazed with sights and sounds beyond human power to endure. It was as in a dream that they rushed toward Vulcan.
Down the Beam into the hollow world they flashed and he perceived only vaguely the jungle and hills and the citadel. They passed together through the triple arch and sank down into the dimness where the Futuremen waited.
Carlin went first into the space between the somber coils. Newton saw him enter the force-field, a tenuous thing of flame, and step forth from it a man — a dazed and reeling man. Otho caught him as he fell.
Curt Newton followed him, into the blue-green light. And all consciousness left him.
He found himself standing upright with Grag’s great arm around him. It was as though his body was encased in lead now, his senses muffled, the very life in him dimmed.
Otho was shouting at him. Grag’s voice boomed in his ear. “Curt, you got back! And you brought him —”
Simon Wright’s metallic cry cut across their excited babble. “Carlin Newton swung around. Philip Carlin had recovered consciousness. He stood, swaying, in the center of the chamber. He was not looking at them. He was looking down at his own body, slowly raising his own arms and staring at them.
And in his face was such white misery as Newton had seen on no man’s face before.
“I can’t”, whispered Carlin, his voice rusty, croaking. “I can’t be like this again, prisoned in leaden flesh. No!” With the word he moved with clumsy reeling swiftness toward the tall golden-shining coils of the other converter.
Newton sprang shakily to intercept him but his own legs buckled and he went to his knee.
“Carlin, wait!”
The scientist turned a face transfigured by agony of resolve. “You weren’t there as long as I, Curt. You don’t know why I have to go back to that other life, that real life.
“But you’ll understand at least. You’ll remember and maybe you too some day — crust. Curt Newton sat at the controls. He who had ridden the Beam before, free and unfettered, now maneuvered the man-made ship along that pathway. His face was harsh with strain and in his eyes was something strange and haunted.
The three who were with him in the bridge-room kept silent as by tacit agreement while the little ship sped swiftly through the opening into the naked glare of the Sun.
Newton’s eyes were dazzled but he could not turn them away from that mighty orb of flame.
And he remembered.
Would he always remember how he had looked upon the Sun unveiled and seen the beating of its heart? Would he always feel the tearing pang he felt now, remembering the freedom and the strength? Would he some day return alone to that buried citadel that held the secret of life and death?
In fierce denial he pressed down the firing-keys. The Comet leaped forward and behind it Vulcan dwindled and was lost, a tiny mote swallowed in the eternal fires of the Sun.
He hurled himself forward onto the dais and was lost in a flare of yellow light.
A small bright star flashed upward toward the triple arch — a living star, swift and free and joyous, seeking the Beam, the pathway to the Sun.
And below, on the dark floor of the citadel, Curt Newton bent his head and hid his face between his hands.
* * * * *
The Comet rose on blasting keel-jets, gathered speed and roared out above the blackened Belt toward the gap in Vulcan’s crust. Curt Newton sat at the controls. He who had ridden the Beam before, free and unfettered, now maneuvered the man-made ship along that pathway. His face was harsh with strain and in his eyes was something strange and haunted.
The three who were with him in the bridge-room kept silent as by tacit agreement while the little ship sped swiftly through the opening into the naked glare of the Sun.
Newton's eyes were dazzled but he could not turn them away from that mighty orb of flame. And he remembered. Would he always remember how he had looked upon the Sun unveiled and seen the beating of its heart? Would he always feel the tearing pang he felt now, remembering the freedom and the strength? Would he some day return alone to that buried citadel that held the secret of life and death?
In fierce denial he pressed down the firing-keys. The Comet leaped forward and behind it Vulcan dwindled and was lost, a tiny mote swallowed in the eternal fires of the Sun.