The City and the Stars Page 0,97

solid rock.

As they lifted once more into space, Alvin felt a strange weariness come over him. He had seen so much, yet learned so little. There were many wonders on all these planets, but what he sought had fled them long ago. It would be useless, he knew, to visit the other worlds of the Seven Suns. Even if there was still intelligence in the Universe, where could he seek it now? He looked at the stars scattered like dust across the vision screen, and knew that what was left of time was not enough to explore them all.

A feeling of loneliness and oppression such as he had never before experienced seemed to overwhelm him. He could understand now the fear of Diaspar for the great spaces of the Universe, the terror that had made his people gather in the little microcosm of their city. It was hard to believe that, after all, they had been right.

He turned to Hilvar for support. But Hilvar was standing, fists tightly clenched and with a glazed look in his eyes. His head was tilted on one side; he seemed to be listening, straining every sense into the emptiness around them.

"What is it?" said Alvin urgently. He had to repeat the question before Hilvar showed any sign of hearing it. He was still staring into nothingness when he finally replied.

"There's something coming," he said slowly. "Something that I don't understand."

It seemed to Alvin that the cabin had suddenly become very cold, and the racial nightmare of the Invaders reared up to confront him in all its terror. With an effort of will that sapped his strength, he forced his mind away from panic.

"Is it friendly?" he asked. "Shall I run for Earth?"

Hilvar did not answer the first question-only the second. His voice was very faint, but showed no sign of alarm or fear. It held rather a vast astonishment and curiosity, as if he had encountered something so surprising that he could not be bothered to deal with Alvin's anxious query.

"You're too late," he said. "It's already here."

The Galaxy had turned many times on its axis since consciousnness first came to Vanamonde. He could recall little of those first aeons and the creatures who had tended him then-but he could remember still his desolation when they had gone and left him alone among the stars. Down the ages since, he had wandered from sun to sun, slowly evolving and increasing Iiis Powers. Once he had dreamed of finding again those who had attended his birth, and though the dream had faded it had never wholly died.

On countless worlds he had found the wreckage that it had left behind, but intelligence he had discovered only once -and from the Black Sun he had fled in terror. Yet the Universe was very large, and the search had scarcely begun.

Far away though it was in space and time, the great burst of power from the heart of the Galaxy beckoned to Vas monde across the light-years. It was utterly unlike the radiation of the stars, and it had appeared in his field of a consciousness as suddenly as a meteor trail across a cloudy sky. He moved through space and time toward it, to the lab moment of its existence, sloughing from him in the way he knew the dead, unchanging pattern of the past.

The long metal shape, with its infinite complexities structure, he could not understand, for it was as strap to him as almost all the things of the physical world. Arou it still clung the aura of power that had drawn him acct the Universe, but that was of no interest to him now. Cap fully, with the delicate nervousness of a wild beast half poi for flight, he reached out toward the two minds he had, covered. And then he knew that his long search was ended.

Alvin grasped Hilvar by the shoulders and shook him violently, trying to drag him back to a greater awareness reality. "Tell me what's happening!" he begged. "What do you want me to do?"

The remote, abstracted look slowly faded from Hilvars eyes.

"I still don't understand," he said, "but there's no need to be frightened-I'm sure of that. Whatever it is, it wok harm us. It seems simply-interested."

Alvin was about to reply when he was suddenly overwhelmed by a sensation unlike any he had ever known fore. A warm, tingling glow seemed to spread through body; it lasted only a few seconds, but when it was gone was no