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.