He went to his room and returned with a foot-square case which he set on a table in the living area. He pressed a stud. A transparent globe inflated over it to a four foot diameter. He dimmed the lights, manipulated the controls and a tiny sun burned in the center of the globe. Another adjustment brought into view the solar planets orbiting around it. The device was an educational tool; it projected as desired, within the envelope of gas, three-dimensional mockups of the solar system, star clusters and galaxies that moved almost as incandescently beautiful as the originals.
Mrs. Sanchez was delighted with the views of the solar system and the surface scenes of the various planets. She had as much general knowledge of the planets as she had of India or France—which had all come to her through the distorting medium of television dramas. The moon had observatories and mad scientists; India had elephants and sinister maharajas; Mars had deserts and fragile ghost people; Venus had quinquaños and swamp dragons; and France was overflowing with sin.
Roberto did not utilize the projector narrative. He explained with his own intense words as he took his parents across the gulf to the constellations. He skipped about the Galaxy, astounding them with the sheer billions of stars. He insinuated the possibility of millions of inhabited planets and then he flung them across the abyss of space to view the Local Group of the Milky Way, its sister Andromeda and the satellite galaxies. Then he plunged them into infinity for a time-lost glimpse of the billion other galaxies thus far discovered.
*
The globe deflated, the lights went on and Roberto leaned toward his mother. “Does not the thought of all this catch at your heart a little?”
There was an uncertainty in her voice that Roberto missed because he was so intent upon her answer. “All those stars,” she said. “Something like that I saw once on the television—about strange people who lived on those stars. I did not like it very much. Perhaps because it is not true.”
“Not true?” Roberto echoed. “Yesterday, yes. Today, not quite. Tomorrow ... your own son is going to the stars!”
“It is beyond my understanding why men cannot be content to remain where they were meant to be.”
“But the stars were meant for us. They are our destiny!” Roberto realized he was speaking too loudly.
Mrs. Sanchez looked squarely at her son. Her words were measured and solemn like some solitary, tolling bell. “If God meant us to be on those stars he would have put us there. Roberto, take care. Listen to the word of your mother. I have not the cleverness of my children but I know things here.” She touched her hand over her heart. “It may be as you say, all the millions of great stars. But they are God’s high places and I tell you, my son, whoever dares violate them will be struck down.”
“But, Mama! In ancient times, when man first took to the air, there were those who proclaimed man presumed too much and would be punished. And a thousand years ago there were people who spoke as you do when man first went into space. They too said God gave us the earth and to covet the moon and the planets was a grievous sin.”
Mrs. Sanchez shrugged. “There are always the fanatics. Your mama is not one of them. God gave men the sun and the moon and the planets and set them apart from the stars for him to work out his salvation. It is natural and right.”
“And he did not give us the stars also?”
“In the sky He put them as a testament to His glory. You have shaken my poor head with the measure of their distance. But it serves to show that they would not have been placed out of reach if they were intended for us to have.”
“But Mama, soon they will no longer be out of reach. Your own son will go to the first one in a great new ship.”
Mrs. Sanchez turned troubled eyes on her son. “I will pray for you.” She averted her face and would no longer look directly at him.
Roberto angrily snatched up the star projector and went to his room.
His father followed. “You must understand,” he said, “your mother is a simple woman. She would rather think of the stars as the lamps of the angels than the huge blazing spheres that they are.”
“I do understand,” Roberto said bitterly. “I have heard her words a thousand times from as many mouths. They have sounded through history and are chains meant to bind man to his few worlds. It is the eternal voice of the heavy, peasant mind which tries to shout down every soaring dream of mankind.”
“Your words are too hard,” his father said.
Roberto’s lips curled to say something cruel but he refrained, not wanting to hurt this fine, little man whose blood was his own.
“Yes,” Roberto said, softening, “for after all there are always the minds which struggle free and lift us up. They have carried us to the threshold of the stars. And the time will come, a thousand years perhaps, when we will be ready to try for our sister Galaxy, Andromeda.” Roberto smiled. “Of course it is certain we will still have our simple folk who will warn us and tell us to beware; that it is not the will of the Almighty that we leave the Milky Way; that we presume too much and we will be struck down. And—” Roberto stopped in mild surprise. He saw in his father’s expression the reflection of his mother’s apprehension.
Roberto turned away sadly and began to pack away the star projector.
Someday, he thought, in spite of the little minds, we will have one of these that will show the other space as commonly as our own. And all their phantom angels and devils shall not bar man from the universe.
*
Time passed.
The ship was launched.
Six long years, Roberto thought. Long years of preparation, testing and training. Hard, bone-wearying hours of familiarization and shakedown with nerve-straining, experimental jumps into the other space. Now at last they were in that other space—that strange, blazing white elsewhere that Korenyik had given to mankind as the trail to the stars—the Horsehead Nebula clear before them.
Six years of frantic activity ... and now he was launched and there was nothing to do in transit but wait. Six years since he had been to the little sun-faded stone house near Mexico City and felt the warm blood-tug of his parents. Papa now dead and Mama with her dark forebodings of angels and God.
He gazed at the dark screens in the starship and wondered what he might see if they were on.
*
In the intense, brilliant region under the vault of heaven the two great creatures, their golden coruscating substance flung across the white space, sensed their coming. My-Ky-El limned the ship with a golden halo and knew the creatures within. He linked with Ra-Fa-El and they communed in soaring crystal carillions of thought.
—they are come from the Black Space Hell. The brood of Satan has broken its bonds and penetrated the barrier!
—how is it so? the Fallen were shrivelled of substance and energy; shorn of motion and thrust down into the Black Space with no memory of their origin....
—nevertheless they are here in a devious shape and White Space is once again threatened....
—they must be annulled NOW!
*
!!!A-ROORRR-UH!!!A-ROORRR-UH!!!
The Klaxon howled out the alarm. The control board erupted into a swiftly spreading plague of red warning lights, indicating the Korenyik Matrix Units were being subjected to incredible strain.
Roberto punched a row of screen tabs. The normal-space view screens showed nothing. He punched in the E-screens. He gasped at the sight, struck with an awful dread. Great golden mists were clustering, bursting, swirling and spiralling in the blinding whiteness. They wreathed the ship, and the KM units sobbed as they strained against the rending golden energies. Roberto fought against odd, thick fear that tried to prostrate him on the deck and make him grovel in utter, abject terror. This icy dread that freezes my blood is not of my making, Roberto