"Now you see, Oldster, and know what it is you see. For life is the rebel, but dead matter knows no path but that given it. "Oldster! Does not life have memory, emotion, volition? Do not even those functions need mechanism? Oldster--" the thought held no sadness, only an immeasurable love "--you know you have choice, and why you have choice. Now farewell! Your time of glory has come." The fluttering of countless minds against his began to quiet. Without pain, he knew they were leaving--were gone--leaving the memory of their near-perfection, carrying with them the ultimate answers of life. And yet it did not matter. Did not matter! He was within his fabled band of decision. In mounting ecstasy, he hurled through those vast spaces that were yet small beyond calculation, went rushing toward his unseen goal. Those "galaxies," those mechanisms of which the golden lights spoke, slanted out behind him, and new ones rushed in to his sightless vision. What old and new thoughts did those swinging "suns" evoke, what memories and dreams, in the slumbering conscious mind of that being who was called Oldster? Which configuration of "stars" and "galaxies" and what motion in and between them, called forth the haunting remembrances of Moon Flame, of Comet Glow and her twin child Dark Fire--of World Rim and the countless lost names of his unmeasured past? Mind had mechanism. It could not be otherwise. And he inhabited, moved through, that band of decision. And soon he would meet--his dark rebel! <tb> His ecstasy soared as he burst across those dimensionless distances, unerringly swung into a blaze of light created by a seeming-sphere of galaxies. And he halted, feeling the throb of his certain knowledge as he fixed his strange vision on the writhing heart of the farthest concourse of stars. Instantly a lone sun heaved from it, moved across darkness. Oldster was in its path as instantly. Even in the midst of that blinding hurt his ecstasy endured. He knew there was no pain, that he did not see, that he was not here. Yet, what did it matter what symbols he chose, symbols that he understood, but which were not real? The dark rebel was within him in this mechanism of mind. And mind has choice! He watched that sun falter in mid-space, watched it reverse direction, and fall back, <i>with its message</i>, to the untroubled galaxy that had urged it forth. His joy was a mighty song as that particle, of itself, jousted with the destiny that bade it continue along its straight-angle course--fought and won! That rebel particle was rushing, rushing, back to the heart of the deep-buried mechanism that ejected it. Soon it would strike. And there would be--explosion! And for him, now, was the time of glory.