From the Ocean from teh Stars (98 page)

Callitrax paused; to Alvin, as to everyone in the great assembly, it seemed that the historian was looking directly at him with eyes that had
witnessed things which even now they could not wholly credit.

"So much," said Callitrax, "for the tales we have believed since our
records began. I must tell you now that they are false—false in every
detail—
so false that even now we have not wholly reconciled them with
the truth"

He waited for the full meaning of his words to strike home. Then,
speaking slowly and carefully, he gave to both Lys and Diaspar the
knowledge that had been won from the mind of Vanamonde.

It was not even true that Man had reached the Stars. The whole of
his little empire was bounded by the orbits of Pluto and Persephone, for interstellar space proved a barrier beyond his power to cross. His entire
civilization was huddled around the sun, and was still very young when—
the stars reached him.

The impact must have been shattering. Despite his failures, Man had
never doubted that one day he would conquer the depths of space. He
believed too that if the Universe held his equals, it did not hold his
superiors. Now he knew that both beliefs were wrong, and that out among
the stars were minds far greater than his own. For many centuries, first
in the ships of other races and later in machines built with borrowed
knowledge, Man had explored the Galaxy. Everywhere he found cultures
he could understand but could not match, and here and there he en
countered minds which would soon have passed altogether beyond his
comprehension.

The shock was tremendous, but it proved the making of the race. Sadder and infinitely wiser, Man had returned to the Solar System to
brood upon the knowledge he had gained. He would accept the challenge,
and slowly he evolved a plan which gave hope for the future.

Once the physical sciences had been Man's greatest interest. Now
he turned even more fiercely to genetics and the study of the mind.
Whatever the cost, he would drive himself to the limits of his evolution.

The great experiment had consumed the entire energies of the race
for millions of years. All that striving, all that sacrifice and toil, became only a handful of words in Callitrax's narrative. It had brought Man his
greatest victories. He had banished disease; he could live forever if he
wished, and in mastering telepathy he had bent the most subtle of all
powers to his will.

He was ready to go out again, relying upon his own resources, into the great spaces of the Galaxy. He would meet as an equal the races of

the worlds from which he had once turned aside. And he would play his full part in the story of the Universe.

These things he did. From this age, perhaps the most spacious of all history, came the legends of the Empire. It had been an Empire of many races, but this had been forgotten in the drama, too tremendous for tragedy, in which it had come to its end.

The Empire had lasted for at least a million years. It must have known many crises, perhaps even wars, but all these were lost in the sweep of great races moving together toward maturity.

"We can be proud," continued Callitrax, "of the part our ancestors played in this story. Even when they had reached their cultural plateau, they lost none of their initiative. We deal now with conjecture rather than proved fact, but it seems certain that the experiments which were at once the Empire's downfall and its crowning glory were inspired and directed by Man.

"The philosophy underlying these experiments appears to have been this. Contact with other species had shown Man how profoundly a race's world-picture depended upon its physical body and the sense organs with which it was equipped. It was argued that a true picture of the Universe could be attained, if at all, only by a mind that was free from such physical limitations—a pure mentality, in fact. This was a conception common among many of Earth's ancient religious faiths, and it seems strange that an idea which had no rational origin should finally become one of the greatest goals of science.

"No disembodied intelligence had ever been encountered in the natural Universe; the Empire set out to create one. We have forgotten, with so much else, the skills and knowledge that made this possible. The scientists of the Empire had mastered all the forces of Nature, all the secrets of time and space. As our minds are the by-product of an immensely intricate arrangement of brain cells, linked together by the network of the nervous system, so they strove to create a brain whose components were not material, but patterns embossed upon space itself. Such a brain, if one can call it that, would use electrical or yet higher forces for its operation, and would be completely free from the tyranny of matter. It could function with far greater speed than any organic intelHgence; it could endure as long as there was an erg of free energy left in the Universe, and no limit could be seen for its powers. Once created, it would develop potentialities which even its makers could not foresee.

"Largely as a result of the experience gained in his own regeneration, Man suggested that the creation of such beings should be attempted. It was the greatest challenge ever thrown out to intelligence in the Universe,

and after centuries of debate it was accepted. All the races of the Galaxy
joined together in its fulfillment.

"More than a million years were to separate the dream from the
reality. Civilizations were to rise and fall, again and yet again the age
long toil of worlds was to be lost, but the goal was never forgotten. One
day we may know the full story of this, the greatest sustained effort in all
history. Today we only know that its ending was a disaster that almost
wrecked the Galaxy.

"Into this period Vanamonde's mind refuses to go. There is a narrow
region of time which is blocked to him; but only, we believe, by his own
fears. At its beginning we can see the Empire at the summit of its glory, taut with the expectation of coming success. At its end, only a few thou
sand years later, the Empire is shattered and the stars themselves are
dimmed as though drained of their power. Over the Galaxy hangs a pall
of fear, a fear with which is linked the name: 'The Mad Mind.'

"What must have happened in that short period is not hard to guess.
The pure mentality had been created, but it was either insane or, as seems
more likely from other sources, was implacably hostile to matter. For
centuries it ravaged the Universe until brought under control by forces
at which we cannot guess. Whatever weapon the Empire used in its extremity squandered the resources of the stars; from the memories of
that conflict spring some, though not all, of the legends of the Invaders.
But of this I shall presently say more.

"The Mad Mind could not be destroyed, for it was immortal. It was
driven to the edge of the Galaxy and there imprisoned in a way we do
not understand. Its prison was a strange artificial star known as the Black
Sun, and there it remains to this day. When the Black Sun dies, it will be free again. How far in the future that day lies there is no way of
telling."

Callitrax became silent, as if lost in his own thoughts, utterly un
conscious of the fact that the eyes of all the world were upon him. In
the long silence, Alvin glanced over the packed multitude around him,
seeking to read their minds as they faced this revelation—and this un
known threat which must now replace the myth of the Invaders. For the
most part, the faces of his fellow citizens were frozen in disbelief; they
were still struggling to reject their false past, and could not yet accept
the yet stranger reality that had superseded it.

Callitrax began to speak again in a quiet, more subdued voice as
he described the last days of the Empire. This was the age, Alvin realized
as the picture unfolded before him, in which he would have liked to
have lived. There had been adventure then, and a superb and dauntless

courage—the courage that could snatch victory from the teeth of disaster.

"Though the Galaxy had been laid waste by the Mad Mind, the
resources of the Empire were still enormous, and its spirit was unbroken. With a courage at which we can only marvel, the great experiment was
resumed and a search made for the flaw that had caused the catastro
phe. There were now, of course, many who opposed the work and predicted further disasters, but they were overruled. The project went ahead
and, with the knowledge so bitterly gained, this time it succeeded.

"The new race that was born had a potential intellect that could not
even be measured. But it was completely infantile; we do not know if
this was expected by its creators, but it seems likely that they knew
it to be inevitable. Millions of years would be needed before it reached
maturity, and nothing could be done to hasten the process. Vanamonde was the first of these minds; there must be others elsewhere in the Gal
axy, but we believe that only a very few were created, for Vanamonde
has never encountered any of his fellows.

"The creation of the pure mentalities was the greatest achievement
of Galactic civilization; in it Man played a major and perhaps a dominant
part. I have made no reference to Earth itself, for its story is merely a
tiny thread in an enormous tapestry. Since it had always been drained of
its most adventurous spirits, our planet had inevitably become highly
conservative, and in the end it opposed the scientists who created Vana
monde. Certainly it played no part at all in the final act.

"The work of the Empire was now finished; the men of that age
looked around at the stars they had ravaged in their desperate peril, and
they made their decision. They would leave the Universe to Vanamonde.

"There is a mystery here—a mystery we may never solve, for Vana
monde cannot help us. All we know is that the Empire made contact
with—something—very strange and very great, far away around the curve
of the Cosmos, at the other extremity of space itself. What it was we can
only guess, but its call must have been of immense urgency, and immense
promise. Within a very short period of time our ancestors and their fellow
races have gone upon a journey which we cannot follow. Vanamonde's
thoughts seem to be bounded by the confines of the Galaxy, but through
his mind we have watched the beginnings of this great and mysterious
adventure. Here is the image that we have reconstructed; now you are
going to look more than a billion years into the past—"

A pale wraith of its former glory, the slowly turning wheel of the Galaxy hung in nothingness. Throughout its length were the great empty rents which the Mad Mind had torn
—
wounds that in ages to come the drifting

stars would fill. But they would never replace the splendor that had gone, Man was about to leave his Universe, as long ago he had left his world. And not only Man, but the thousand other races that had worked with him to make the Empire. They were gathered together, here at the edge of the Galaxy, with its whole thickness between them and the goal they would not reach for ages.

They had assembled a fleet before which imagination quailed. Its flagships were suns, its smallest vessels, planets. An entire globular cluster, with all its solar systems and all their teeming worlds, was about to be launched across infinity.

The long line of fire smashed through the heart of the Universe, leaping from star to star. In a moment of time a thousand suns had died, feeding their energies to the monstrous shape that had torn along the aix of the Galaxy, and was now receding into the abyss.
. . .

"So the Empire left our Universe, to meet its destiny elsewhere. When
its heirs, the pure mentalities, have reached their full stature, it may
return again. But that day must still lie far ahead.

"This, in its briefest and most superficial outlines, is the story of
Galactic civilization. Our own history, which to us seems so important, is
no more than a belated and trivial epilogue, though one so complex that
we have not been able to unravel all its details. It seems that many of the
older, less adventurous races refused to leave their homes; our direct
ancestors were among them. Most of these races fell into decadence and are now extinct, though some may still survive. Our own world barely escaped the same fate. During the Transition Centuries—which actually
lasted for millions of years—the knowledge of the past was lost or else
deliberately destroyed. The latter, hard though it is to believe, seems
more probable. For ages, Man sank into a superstitious yet still scientific barbarism during which he distorted history to remove his sense of im
potence and failure. The legends of the Invader are completely false,
although the desperate struggle against the Mad Mind undoubtedly con
tributed something to them. Nothing drove our ancestors back to Earth
except the sickness in their souls.

"When we made this discovery, one problem in particular puzzled us
in Lys. The Battle of Shalmirane never occurred—yet Shalmirane existed,
and exists to this day. What is more, it was one of the greatest weapons
of destruction ever built.

"It took us some time to resolve this puzzle, but the answer, once it
was found, was very simple. Long ago our Earth had a single giant satel
lite, the Moon. When, in the tug of war between the tides and gravity,
the Moon at last began to fall, it became necessary to destroy it. Shal-