“It will soon be my turn!” said Chara calmly making her way towards the arcade exit; she glanced at Mven lass and disappeared, accompanied by whispered questions and thousands of curious glances.
The stage was occupied by a gymnast, a beautifully proportioned girl no more than eighteen years old. In the golden floodlights, to the recitative of the music, she went through an amazingly rapid succession of leaps, springs and turns, balancing with unbelievable equilibrium to slow, lyrical passages of music. The audience awarded her performance with a multitude of golden lights and Mven Mass thought that it would not be easy for Chara Nandi to dance after such a successful number. He looked anxiously at the faceless multitude of people opposite and suddenly noticed the artist Cart Sann sitting in the third sector. The latter greeted him with a gaiety that the African felt out of place — who, if not the artist who had painted Chara’s picture as the Daughter of the Mediterranean, should have been perturbed at the outcome of her performance.
The African was just thinking that after his experiment he would go to see the Daughter of the Mediterranean when the lights overhead were extinguished. The transparent floor of organic glass gleamed with the cherry-red light of hot iron. Streams of red light poured out from under low footlights around the stage. The lights moved back and forth keeping time with the marked rhythm of the melody and merging with the resonant song of the violins and the low hum of bronze strings. Mven Mass was somewhat staggered by the power and tempestuousness of the music and did not immediately notice Chara as she appeared in the centre of that flaming floor and began her dance at a Speed that took the onlookers’ breath away.
Mven Mass was afraid of what might happen if the music demanded still greater acceleration of the dance. She danced not only with her legs and arms — the girl’s entire body responded to the blazing fire of the music with equally searing flames of life. The African thought that if the women of ancient India had been like Chara, then the poet had been right in likening them to flaming bowls and in giving that name to the women’s fete.
Chara’s reddish sunburn turned to a bright copper in the glow of the stage and the floor. Mven Mass’s heart beat wildly. The woman he had seen on the fabulous planet of Epsilon Toucanis had skin of just that colour. At that time, also, he had learned there existed such a thing as the inspiration of a body capable of employing its movements, its delicate changes of beautiful forms, to express the most profound shades of feeling, fantasy and passion, to express a prayer for happiness.
Up to that moment he had known nothing but the urge to overcome the unattainable distance of ninety parsecs but now Mven Mass realized that flowers just as beautiful as the carefully nurtured picture of the distant planet were to be found in the inexhaustible treasure-house of terrestrial beauty. But his long-cherished urge to achieve an unattainable dream did not pass so quickly. Chara’s likeness to the red-skinned daughter in the world of Epsilon Toucanis only served to strengthen the determination of the Director of the Outer Stations. If so much joy was to be felt from one Chara Nandi what would the world be like where the majority of the women were like her?!
Evda Nahl and Veda Kong, excellent dancers themselves, were staggered at this, the first of Chara’s dances that they had seen. Veda, anthropologist and specialist in the history of the ancient races, had come to the decision that in the past the women of Gondwana, the southern countries, had exceeded the men in number because men were often killed hunting dangerous wild beasts. Later when the despotic states of the Ancient East were established in the densely populated countries of the south, the men continued to be killed in wars, by religious excesses and by the whims of the despots. The daughters of the south went through a period of the strictest selection that developed the finer points of adaptation. In the north, where the population was scantier and nature less bounteous, there had not been such despotism in the Dark Ages. More men survived, women were more valued and lived a more dignified life.
Veda followed Chara’s every gesture and conceived the idea that in all her movements there was an amazing duality — they were at once gentle and predatory. The gentleness came from the graceful movements and unbelievable suppleness of the body and the predatory impression was created by the abrupt changes, turns and poses that followed each other with the elusive rapidity that is natural in the wild beast. This feline litheness had been achieved by the dark-skinned daughters of Gondwana in the thousands of years of the struggle for existence through which the debased and enslaved women of the southern continents had lived… but in Chara it was harmonically combined with the small firm features of a Creto-Hellenic face.
The dissonant sounds of some percussion instruments merged in a short, slower adagio. The urgent, ever swifter rhythm of the rise and fall of human emotions was expressed in the dance by the alternation of movements full of meaning and their almost complete cessation when the dancer turned into a motionless statue. Slumbering emotions were aroused, flared up stormily, wilted in their exhaustion, died and were born again, stormy and untasted — life, fettered and struggling against the inevitable march of time, against the clear-cut, merciless definiteness of duty and fate. Evda Nahl felt that the psychological basis of the dance was something so near to her that her cheeks became flushed and her breathing quickened.
Mven Mass did not know that the composer had written the ballet suite specially for Chara Nandi, but he was no longer afraid of the wild tempo when he saw how well the girl was coping with it. Scarlet waves of light embraced her copper body, gave off crimson splashes from her strong legs, were drowned in the dark whirls of velvet and turned the white silk to the pink of dawn. Her arms, raised and thrown back, slowly ceased their motion over her head. Suddenly, without any finale, the music broke off in a stormy clangour of high notes and the red lights came to a standstill and were extinguished. The high dome of the building was flooded with its usual light. The tired girl bowed her head and her thick hair covered her face. The thousands of golden lights were followed by a dull noise. The audience were doing Chara the greatest of all honours — they were thanking her by standing up and stretching their clasped hands towards her. Chara, who, before the performance, had not known a tremor, lost her self-possession, threw back the hair from her face and ran away, after a glance towards the upper galleries. Mven Mass knew then why the artist had been so calm — he knew his model.
The Master of Ceremonies announced an entr’acte. Mven Mass hurried to look for Chara while Veda Kong and Evda Nahl went out on to the gigantic opaque glass staircase, a thousand metres wide, that led from the stadium straight down to the sea. The evening twilight, lucid and warm, tempted the two women to bathe, following the example of thousands of other spectators from the fete.
“No wonder I was attracted to Chara Nandi the moment I saw her,” said Evda Nahl. “She’s a remarkable artist. Today we have seen the Dance of the Power of Life, in which is incorporated the best of everything that constitutes the foundation of the human soul and is frequently its ruler. That must contain something of the erotic dances of the ancients!”
“Now I understand Cart Sann, for beauty really is more important than we think. Beauty is the happiness and the meaning of life — how well he said that! And your definition is a true one!” agreed Veda, kicking off a shoe and putting her foot into the warm water that splashed against the steps.
“It is a true one if the psychic forces are born of a healthy body full of energy,” Evda Nahl corrected her as she removed her clothes and jumped into the transparent water. Veda swam after her and they went together to a huge rubber island that shone silver about a mile away from the stadium. The flat surface of the island, level with the water, was surrounded by rows of shelters in the shape of shells of mother-of-pearl plastic, big enough to screen three or four people from the sun and wind and to isolate them from their neighbours.
The two women lay down on the soft, swaying floor of a “shell,” breathing deeply of the eternally fresh smell of the sea.
“You
’ve got beautifully tanned since I met you on the beach!” said Veda looking at her companion. “Have you been at the seaside or does it come from sunburn pills?”
“SB pills,” admitted Evda, “I’ve been in the sun for only two days, yesterday and today. I haven’t got such wonderful skin as Chara Nandi.”
“Don’t you really know where Renn Bose is?” continued Veda.
“I know approximately and that is sufficient to worry me!” answered Evda Nahl, softly.
“Do you really want…” began Veda and then stopped but Evda lifted her lazily closed eyelids and looked her straight in the eyes.
“It seems to me that Renn Bose is somehow… helpless, like an undeveloped boy,” Veda objected, hesitantly, “and you’re so strong, you have an intellect that is the equal of any man’s. One always feels that inside you there is a steel rod, your will-power….”
“Renn Bose told me the same. But you’re wrong in your estimation of him, you’re as one-sided as Renn Bose himself. He is a man with a bold and powerful intellect and a terrific capacity for work. Even today there are few to equal him on our planet. It is the comparison of his other qualities with his great talents that makes them seem undeveloped because they are just about the average or even puerile, perhaps. You were right in calling Renn a boy, he is, but at the same time he’s a hero in the true sense of the word. Take Darr Veter — there’s something boylike in him, too, but with him it’s just a superabundance of physical strength and not the lack of it, like it is with Renn.”
“What do you think of Mven?” Veda inquired, “now that you know him better.”
“Mven Mass is a splendid combination of the cold intellect and the archaic fury of desires. He is a man of great ability and is highly educated but at the same time he is the high priest of nature’s elemental forces!”
Veda Kong burst out laughing. “How can I learn to give such precise character studies?!”
"Psychology is my line,” said Evda, shrugging her shoulders. “But let me ask you a question. Do you know that Darr Veter is a man that I like very much?”
“You’re afraid of half-formed decisions?” Veda blushed. “No, this time there will be no fatal half-way decisions and insincerity. Everything is as clear as crystal….’’ Under the penetrating glance of the psychiatrist, Veda continued:
“Erg Noor… our ways parted long ago. I could not give way to a new feeling as long as he was in the Cosmos. I could not draw myself away and so weaken the strength of my hopes, my faith in his return. Now it is only a case of precise calculation and confidence. Erg Noor knows everything but is going his own way.”
Evda Nahl placed her slender arm round Veda’s shoulder.
“So it’s Darr Veter?”
“Yes,” answered Veda, firmly.
“Does he know?”
“No. Later, when Tantra arrives…. Isn’t it time for us to go back?”
“I have to leave the fete,” said Evda Nahl, “my holiday is finished. I have a big job to do in the Academy of Sorrow and Joy, and I must see my daughter before I go there.”
“Is she a big girl?”
“Seventeen. My son is older. I have done the duty of every woman who is normally developed and has normal heredity — two children, no less! Now I want a third one — but I want him grown up!” Evda Nahl smiled and her serious face was lit up with the tenderness of love, her bow-shaped upper lip lifted slightly.
“I imagine a fine, big-eyed boy with such a loving and ever-astonished mouth… with freckles and a snub nose,” said Veda, slyly, looking straight in front of her. Her companion, after a short pause, asked her;
“Have you got any new job yet?”
“No, I’m waiting for Tuntra, then there will be a big expedition.”
"Then come with me to visit my daughter,” suggested Evda, and Veda gladly consented.
The whole of one wall of the observatory was taken up with a seven-metre hemispherical screen for the demonstration of films and photos taken by powerful telescopes. Mven Mass switched on a general view of a section of the sky near the North Pole of the Galaxy, the meridional strip of constellations from Ursa Major to Corvus and Centaurus. In this part, in Canes Venatici, Coma Berenices and Virgo there were many galaxies, islands of stars in the form of flat wheels or discs. An especially large number of them had been discovered in Coma Berenices — separate galaxies, of regular and irregular form, showing different degrees of revolution and projection, some of them inconceivably far away, at a distance of thousands of millions of parsecs, often forming whole “clouds” of tens of thousands of galaxies. The biggest of the galaxies are anything from 20,000 to 50,000 parsecs in diameter, like the stellar island or Galaxy NN 89105 + SB 23, in the old days known as M 31, or the Andromeda Nebula. This little, faintly gleaming, nebulous cloud could be seen from Earth with the naked eye. Long before this people had discovered the secret of this cloud. The nebula proved to be a gigantic, wheel-shaped stellar system one and a half times the size of our huge Galaxy. The study of the Andromeda Nebula, despite the fact that it was 450,000 parsecs distant from terrestrial observers, did much to help gain knowledge of our own Galaxy.
Mven Mass remembered from childhood the magnificent photographs of the various galaxies that had been obtained by means of electron inverted pictures or by radio telescopes such as the gigantic Pamir and Patagonia installations, each of them almost 400 kilometres in diameter, that penetrated even deeper into the Cosmos. The galaxies, monster clusters of billions of celestial bodies separated by distances of millions of parsecs, had always aroused in him an irrepressible desire to know the laws of their constitution, the story of their origin and their further evolution. The main thing that intrigued every inhabitant of Earth was the possibility of there being life on the countless planetary systems in these islands of the Universe, the question of the fires of thought and knowledge that burned there, of human civilizations in those infinitely distant spaces of the Cosmos.
Three stars appeared on the screen that the ancients had named Alpheratz, Mirach and Almak, (α, β, γ Andromedae), arranged in an ascending straight line. On either side of this line were the two galaxies close to each other, the Andromeda Nebula or M 31, and the beautiful spiral of M 33 in the Triangnlum Constellation. Mven Mass changed the metal film.
He was now looking at the galaxy known in ancient days as M 51, in the Canes Venatici, 800,000 parsecs away. This was one of the few galaxies that we see “flat,” our line of sight being perpendicular to the plane of the “wheel.” It has a very bright, dense core made up of countless millions of stars from which two spiral arms stretch out, each of them with similarly dense star clusters at the beginning. Their long ends seem to get fainter and more nebulous until they disappear into the darkness of space, stretching for tens of thousands of parsecs from each other in opposite directions. Between the arms, or main branches, there are short streams of stellar condensations and clouds of luminous gas alternating with black “voids,” accumulations of dark matter; the bright arms are all curved like the blades of a turbine.
The huge galaxy NGK 4565 in the Coma Berenices Constellation was a very beautiful one. At a distance of a million parsecs it was seen edgeways. Leaning over to one side, like a soaring bird, the galaxy spread its thin disc, apparently consisting of spiral branches, over a huge area; the central core was a greatly oblate spheroid that burned brightly and had the appearance of a solid gleaming mass. It could be clearly seen that the islands of stars were so flat that the galaxy could be compared to a thin wheel belonging to some clockwork mechanism. The edges of the wheel were indistinct, they seemed to merge into the bottomless void. Our Sun is located on just such an edge of a galaxy together with a tiny speck of dust called Earth that, linked by the power of knowledge with many inhabited worlds, is spreading the wings of human thought over the infinity of the Cosmos!
Mven Mass then switched the projector over to the galaxy NGK 4594 in the Virgo Constellation; this galaxy, also visible in its equatorial plane,
had always interested him. It stood at a distance of ten million parsecs from Earth and resembled a thick lentil of burning stellar material wrapped in a layer of luminescent gas. A thick black line, a condensation of dark material, cut the lentil along its equator. The galaxy looked like a mysterious lantern shining out of an enormous abyss.
What worlds were hidden there, in a galaxy whose total radiation was brighter than that of other galaxies and averaged that of an F class star? Were there any mighty inhabited planets there? Was thought there also grappling with the mysteries of nature?
The fact that the huge clusters of stars did not answer made Mven Mass clench his fists. He realized the terrific distances involved — light from the galaxy he was looking at travelled thirty-two million years to reach Earth. Sixty-four million years would be required to exchange information!
Mven Mass selected another reel and on the screen there appeared a big, bright, round patch of light amongst dispersed, faint stars. An irregular black strip cut the patch in two, making the brightly gleaming fiery masses on either side of it still brighter by contrast and thickening towards its ends and overshadowing an extensive field of the burning gas that formed a ring round the bright patch. This was a picture of colliding galaxies in the Cygnus Constellation that had been obtained by the most remarkably ingenious technical set-ups. This collision of giant galaxies, each equal in size to our Galaxy or to the Andromeda Nebula, had long been known as a source of radio emanation, probably the most powerful in the part of the Universe that we could probe. Rapidly moving gas streams of colossal size set up electromagnetic fields of such inconceivable power that they sent out news of the titanic catastrophe to all ends of the Universe. Matter itself sent out this alarm signal from a radio station with a power of a quintillion megawatts. So great was the distance to the galaxies, however, that the picture on the screen showed its state millions of years before. The present state of these two galaxies, passing one through the other, will be known on Earth such a long time after that we cannot say whether terrestrial man will continue to exist so unimaginably long.
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