Devil Star was back in the forty-eighth band, watching Dark Fire. <tb> The moment of watching drew out. "Devil Star!" The cry blasted across space, imperative; but in the sub-strata of that cry was unspeakable horror. And faintly Devil Star spoke: "No." She came across the spaces, trailing chaotic streams of energy. Her speechless rage preceded her like a curling tidal wave. Astounded, he felt a searing burst of pain in the energy fields of his complex body, and saw that a flaming red beam of force had leaped from her. He tried to beat it off with instantly erected screens. The beam seared through. She was pouring the energy of her body into that beam, intent on eating through to the heart of him. "You must die, Devil Star!" The mindless cacophony screamed at him. "You must die! You are in the band of life! And you must die!" He spurred frantically back, but she followed. Desperately he felt that click in his mind which told him he was out of the forty-eighth band and into the forty-seventh. But she burst into that space after him--and the next and the next. As he fled, a chilling certainty rose in Devil Star. The laws of life had been violated. No matter that he had triumphed in some obscure, staggering way that he could not yet comprehend. To Dark Fire, it made no difference. Her wisdom, her destroying hate, as with all green lights, must have its source in blind instinct. There had been outrage. He must die. A cruel incisiveness claimed him as he dropped down the terraced spaces of the universe. Here and there, he plucked small suns from the heavens, converted them to seething energy. When she burst through after him into the second band of space, he was ready for her. All the quivering excess energy his swollen body held was channeled into a concentrated sword of destruction that smote her point-blank. Shaken even beyond horror, he saw those clouds of fuming light that exploded from the core of her. She hung without motion, lax, visions down, a sickly pale radiance creeping in waves through her. Across her central green light fitful waves of yellow surged. And then the force fields of her body lost their hold. Visibly she began to expand. "I am dying!" The hideous accusation blasted out at him. "As you would have had me die!" "No, no! Devil Star, you have done a terrible thing. You--do not yet know--how terrible. Terrible--for you." "I had choice!" he cried bitterly. Silence. Then, from a distance, muttering: "Choice. No. There could have been no--choice. It began--how long ago? Before you were born, Devil Star. Back to--the beginning. No thought but caused a thought. No motion but caused a motion. How--else could it be? "Devil Star!" That muttering, distant voice held blind despair. "Your only immortality--truly, your only happiness--lay in that child you and I--would have created...."