At once he was transformed back into a creature of cunning. The green light disappeared into a hyper-space. The purple light appeared bewildered. Then he too disappeared, and Devil Star, bitterly frightened that already he had lost them, felt the click in his thought swirls which transported him into the second band of the universe's forty-eight faces. Here was cosmos in wild, disordered motion. Spasms of pain ripped through Devil Star as eating vibrations impinged on him. For a nickering moment he allowed himself to wonder at the reason behind that amok universe. Causeless? Nothing without cause! Or was there? He flicked into the next band, following green and purple light upward until around them were those cubed celestial bodies of the forty-seventh band. The green light vanished. Solar Cloud remained behind, bewilderedly searching for her. A wild excitement shook Devil Star. He must get closer. Solar Cloud knew nothing of a forty-eighth band, but surely the green light would somehow draw him into it. And Devil Star would inadvertently be drawn with him! And, subtly, he knew why he must follow. There was the memory--the damning memory of his birth--and he must know if it was memory, or a phantasm without meaning in fact. He moved closer to Solar Cloud ... and, abruptly, felt himself swept along in some giant tide. He had his moment of surprise before his consciousness momentarily blurred. Then, sharply, he was aware. His visions darted out, contracted. The full knowledge of where he was smote him. Crystalline tongues of fire quivered from his contracting body. He knew he had done an impossible thing. He, unmatured, was in the forty-eighth band. <tb> Time passed, the great, vital pulses of time, flowing like an unseen river through that band where life was born. Devil Star watched numbly, without horror, triumph, feeling. He saw that mating of green and purple light as their central cores met in annihilating fusion. He saw the grayness of coming death settle over Solar Cloud. He drifted into a torpor, saw the pulsing white ball which heralded life, and saw nothing there. The moment was relived. The memory had been there. Then, all that was gone. Against his will, he had been moved to the first band in true space. His thoughts did not function. He hung in a box of emptiness between two stars, unable to plumb the depths of that staggering event. Solar Cloud was dead, or dying. As he, Devil Star, was destined to die. Now the thoughts did start. An incredible thing had happened. Where had it begun? Ten thousand billion years ago? Or--a mere fragment of time away to that moment when Devil Star was born? His thoughts took their upward surge. As full awareness came back, he felt a shock of knowledge.