use cover REVOLT OF THE DEVIL STAR By ROSS ROCKLYNNE The Law of the Universe stated that all life must create and die. Devil Star defied the law--for did he not know the dread secret of his birth? [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy February 1951 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] [illus] <i>The story of Darkness has been told. Darkness, the dreamer who crossed the immeasurable gulf of lightless emptiness between two universes. He, an energy creature tens of millions of miles in girth, sought the answer to life. Perhaps he found that answer in death, when he mated in the thus-far inaccessible forty-eighth band of life.</i> <i>And the story of Darkness' daughter Sun Destroyer has been told. She plunged back along Darkness' trail to seek out that aged, sorrowing being whose name was Oldster. For Oldster was wise. He had counselled Darkness. Surely Oldster could lead Sun Destroyer to her life's completion in the forty-ninth band of hyper-space. But there was no forty-ninth band, unless it lay in Sun Destroyer's wild fantasies of impossible happiness. She too died, yearning for her son Vanguard, the infant purple light who lay helpless in the seventeenth band of hyper-space.</i> <i>The story of Vanguard too has been told. He was renamed Yellow Light by his taunting playmates, because of imperfections in his central core. Physically disabled by his long stay in the seventeenth band, he was never to know happiness. Oldster, in his compassion and wisdom, led Vanguard to mate--to create and thus to die--for he knew Vanguard's true greatness, that he was destined to father a new race who would supplant the old.</i> <i>And this is the last story of the Darkness, the story of the purple light named Devil Star.</i> <tb> Youth and play. Youth and that great yard of galaxies with the great high fence of the darkness. Youth and the joys of living ... and the deep-fluttering memory of his birth. Into his ten-millionth year he never spoke of that memory. He kept it cold and suffocating in an unplumbed chamber of his thought swirls. Then it pressed upward in its wild escape. "Moon Flame!" His companion in the joyous race across that galaxy touched him briefly with his visions. "You spoke?" "Yes! Moon Flame, listen to me. I must know something. Whether you--if the others--if <i>they</i> remember. Remember the moment of birth! Remember the mother--the dying father--<i>the band of life</i>--" His aura quivered. He strove not to read concern in the gaze of Moon Flame. "I do not remember it," said Moon Flame slowly. "Birth? Death? Father? You speak in riddles, Devil Star. Come now, faster! I see the others in the galaxy beyond. Forget that silliness!" For a clairvoyant second in his time-scale, the raging thoughts of Devil Star swelled. And subsided. He flung himself into Moon Flame's path.