1: The Swarm From Space

The floor beneath me, slanting swiftly downward, flung me across the room and against its metal wall as our whole ship suddenly spun crazily in mid-space. For the moment following I had only a swift vision of walls and floor and ceiling gyrating insanely about me while I clutched in vain for some hold upon them, and at the same moment I glimpsed through the window the other ships of my little squadron plunging helplessly about behind us. Then as our craft's wild whirling slackened I stumbled to my feet, out of the room and up the narrow stair outside it, bursting into the transparent-walled little pilot room where my two strange lieutenants stood at the ship's controls.

"Korus Kan! Jhul Din!" I exclaimed. "Are you trying to wreck us all?"

The two turned toward me, saluting. Korus Kan, of Antares, was of the metal-bodied races of that star's countless worlds, his brain and heart and nervous system and vital organs encased in an upright body of gleaming metal whose powerful triple arms and triple legs were immune from all fatigue, and from whose ball-like upper brain-chamber or head his triangle of three keen eyes looked forth. Jhul Din, too, was as patently of Spica, of the crustacean peoples of that sun's planets, with his big, erect body armored in hard black shell, his two mighty upper arms and two lower legs short and thick and stiff, while from his shiny black conical head protruded his twin round eyes. Drawn as the members of our crews were, from every peopled star in the galaxy, there were yet no stranger or more dissimilar shapes among them than these two, who confronted me for a moment now in silence before Korus Kan made answer.

"Sorry, sir," he said; "it was another uncharted ether current."

"Another," I repeated, and they nodded.

"This squadron is supposed to have the easiest section of the whole Interstellar Patrol, out here along the galaxy's edge," said Jhul Din, "but we're no sooner clear of one cursed current than we're into another."

"Well, currents or no currents, we'll have to hold our course," I told them. "The Patrol has to be kept up, even out here." And as Korus Kan's hands on the controls brought our long, slender ship back into its proper path I stepped over beside him. Standing between the Antarian and the Spican and glancing back through our rear telescopic distance-windows I could make out in a moment the other ships of our squadron, falling again into formation far behind us. Then I had turned, and with my two friends was gazing forth into the great vista of light and darkness that lay before us.

It was toward our left that the light lay, for to the right and in front and behind us the eye met only blackness, the utter, unimaginable blackness of outer space. Left of us, though, there stretched along the ebon heavens a colossal belt of countless brilliant stars, the gathered suns of our galaxy. A stupendous, disk-like mass of stars, it floated there in the black void of space like a little island of light, and hundreds of billions of miles outward from the outermost suns of this island-universe our little squadron flashed through space, parallel to its edge. Looking toward the great galaxy from that distance, its countless thousands of glittering suns seemed merged almost in one mighty flaming mass; yet even among those thousands there burned out distinctly the clearer glory of the greater suns, the blue radiance of Vega, or the yellow splendor of Altair, or the white fire of great Canopus itself. Here and there among the fiery thousands, too, there glowed the strange, misty luminescence of the galaxy's mighty comets, while at the galaxy's edge directly to our left there flamed among the more loosely scattered stars the great Cancer cluster, a close-packed, ball-like mass of hundreds of shining suns, gathered together there like a great hive of swarming stars.

On our right, though, sharply contrasted with the galaxy's far-flung splendor, there stretched only blackness, the deep, utter blackness of that titanic void that lies outside our universe. Black, deep black, it stretched away in unthinkable reaches of eternal emptiness and night. Far away in that blackness the eye could in time make out, hardly to be seen, a few faint little patches of misty light, glowing feebly to our eyes across the mighty gloom of space; faint patches of light that were, I knew, galaxies of stars, island-universes like our own, separated from our own by a titanic void of millions of light-years of space, an immensity of emptiness into which even the swiftest of our ships could not venture, and beside which the distances between our own stars seemed tiny and insignificant.

In silence we gazed into that mighty panorama of thronging stars and cosmic void, standing there together as we three had stood for many an hour, Antarian and Spican and human. From the ship's hull, stretched beneath the little pilot-room in which we stood, there came dimly to our ears the strangely differing voices of our crew. Over these occasional voices, too, there beat unceasingly the deep, droning hum of the great mechanisms whose tremendously powerful force-vibrations were propelling us on through space at almost a thousand light-speeds. Except for these familiar half-heard sounds, though, there was only silence in the pilot room, and in silence we three gazed as our ship and the ships behind it flashed on and on. Then, abruptly, Korus Kan uttered a sharp cry, pointing upward. "Look!" he cried. "That swarm on the space-chart!"

* * *

Startled, our eyes lifted to where the Antarian pointed, toward the big space-chart on the wall above the window. A great rectangle of smooth, burnished metal, upon its flat surface were represented all in the heavens immediately about us. On the chart's left side there shone scores of little circles of glowing light, extending outward from the left edge for several inches, representing the outmost suns of the great galaxy to our left. Inches outward from the outermost of those glowing circles there moved upon the blank metal, creeping upward in a course parallel to the galaxy's edge, a formation of a dozen tiny black dots, the dots that were our squadron of ships, holding to our regular patrol far out from the galaxy's edge. And inches outward from our ship-dots, in turn, out in the blank metal at the chart's right, there moved inward toward us and toward the galaxy a great swarm of other black dots, a close-massed cluster of thousands of dots there on the chart that represented, we knew, a mighty swarm of matter moving in out of the void of outer space toward our ships and toward the galaxy to our left!

"A swarm of meteors!" I exclaimed. It could be nothing else, I knew, that was approaching our galaxy out of the unplumbed, awful void. "A swarm of meteors from outer space. And moving at unthinkable speed."

"A swarm of meteors from outer space," repeated Korus Kan, thoughtfully. "It's unprecedented-and yet the space-chart doesn't lie."

I glanced again at the big chart. "The swarm's heading almost straight toward us," I said, watching the close-massed dots creeping across the big chart. "But it's traveling at thousands of light-speeds, and must be caught in an ether-current of inconceivable velocity."

"Its speed seems to be steadily slackening, though," said Jhul Din as we gazed up at the space-chart in silent awe.

I nodded. "Yes, but it ought to reach us within a few more hours. We'll halt our ships here until it reaches us, and as it passes we can ascertain its extent and report to General Patrol Headquarters at Canopus. They can send out meteor-sweeps then to destroy the swarm before it can enter the galaxy and menace interstellar navigation."

Even while I spoke Korus Kan had swiftly shifted the levers in his grasp, quickly reducing our craft's great speed, while the half-score of ships behind us slowed their own flight at the same moment in answer to his signal. The humming drone of our great propulsion-vibration generators waned to a thin whine and then died altogether as our ships came to a halt, while at the same moment the dozen ship-dots on the space-chart ceased to move also, hanging motionless on that chart as we were hanging motionless in space. Inches to the right of them, though, the close-massed dots of the mighty swarm were still creeping steadily across the chart, though now their unheard-of speed was fast slackening. In silent awe we regarded them. Out there in the awful void beside us, we knew, the great swarm was rushing ever closer toward us even as those thousands of close-massed dots crept toward our own ship-dots, and a strange tension held us as we watched them moving nearer.

To any of our comrades in the Interstellar Patrol it would have seemed strange enough, no doubt, the tense silence in which we watched the approach of the swarm, for surely a meteor swarm more or less was nothing new to us. We had met with many a one in our patrols inside the galaxy, and many a time had aided in the work of the great star-cruising meteor-sweeps which keep free of them the space-lanes between the galaxy's suns. But this swarm, rushing toward us out of the mighty depths of outer space, was different.

Never in all our history had any such mighty swarm of matter as this come toward our galaxy from the unplumbed outer void, and at such a speed as this one. For though it was moving slower and slower there on the space-chart, the great swarm was still flashing through space toward the galaxy at more than a thousand light-speeds, a velocity greater than that of any of our ships.

Silently we watched, there in the pilot room, while the swarm of close-massed dots crept across the big space-chart, toward the galaxy and toward the dozen dots that were our ships. Slower and slower still it was moving, its speed smoothly and steadily decreasing as it swept in toward the galaxy from outer space. Such a decrease in speed was strange enough, we knew, but knew too that if the swarm was being borne on toward us by a terrific ether-current its speed would slacken as the speed of the current slackened.

The minutes dragged past, forming into an hour, and another, and another, while we watched and waited there, and steadily still the swarm crept on toward us, moving on now at a steady velocity of five to six hundred light-speeds. Our ships hung silent and motionless still in space, with away to our left the flaming torches of the galaxy's thronging suns, and to our right the great vault of blackness out of which that mighty swarm of matter was rushing toward us.

Straight toward us almost it was heading on the space-chart, and now, as it crept over the last half-inch that separated it on the chart from our ships, I gave an order that sent our ships and those behind it slanting steeply upward. In swift, great spirals our squadron climbed, and within a moment more was hanging thousands of miles higher in space than before, our prows pointed now toward the galaxy. Tensely I watched the space-chart and then, just as the great swarm of black dots reached the dozen dots that were our ships, I uttered a single word, and instantly our squadron was racing toward the galaxy at a full five-hundred light-speeds, moving now at the same speed as the great swarm and hanging thousands of miles above it as it rushed on through space toward the galaxy. It was the familiar maneuver of the Interstellar Patrol in reconnoitenng a meteor-swarm, to hang above it and race at the same speed with it through space, but never yet had we essayed it on such a swarm as this one, moving as it was at an incredible speed for inanimate matter, and without any signs about it of the ether-current which we had thought was the reason for that speed.

Now, as our ships hummed swiftly on, I stood with Jhul Din at the projecting distance-windows, gazing down into the mighty abyss of space that lay beneath us. Somewhere in that abyss, I knew, the great swarm was racing on at the same speed as ourselves, but as we gazed tensely down our eyes met nothing but an impenetrable darkness, the cold, empty blackness of the infinite void. I turned, signaled with my hand to Korus Kan at the controls, and then our ship began to drop smoothly to a lower level as it raced on, following a downward-slanting course now with the ships of our squadron behind close on our track. Down we slanted, still racing onward at the same terrific speed, while the Spican and I searched the darkness beneath with our eyes through the thick-lensed prospecting windows, yet still was nothing visible in the tenebrous void below. Lower, still lower, our ships slanted, and then suddenly Jhul Din gave utterance to a short exclamation.

"Down there!" he cried, pointing down through the little window. "Those shining points-you see them?"

* * *

I gazed tensely down in the direction in which he pointed, and for a time could see nothing still but the infinite unlit blackness. Then suddenly my eyes too made out a few gleaming little points of light in the darkness far beneath us, points of light far separated from each other and driving on through space toward the galaxy far ahead, at the same speed as ourselves. And now, as our ships slanted still down over and toward them, they became more and more numerous to my eyes, a vast, far-flung swarm of fully five thousand gleaming points, spaced a thousand miles from one another, and racing on through space in a great triangular or wedge-shaped formation, the triangle's apex toward the galaxy ahead. The light with which each gleamed made the whole vast swarm seem like a throng of tiny ghosts of stars, driving through the void, though I knew that metallic meteors sometimes shone so with light reflected from the stars.

Never yet, though, had I seen a swarm gathered in such a precise formation as this one, or one that flashed onward at such vast and uniform speed. It was like a scene out of some strange dream, lying there in the black void beneath us, the mighty, silent swarm of light-points whirling on through space at that awful speed toward the massed, burning suns of the galaxy far ahead, out of the mysteries of outer space. Held still silent by the strangeness of it we gazed down upon it, as our ships slanted lower still. Then, as our squadron drove down at last to within a few hundred miles of the great swarm, the nature of those driving points of light became suddenly visible, and we gasped aloud.

For these were no meteors that drove through space in that mighty swarm beneath us! These were no fragments of cosmic wreckage out of the flotsam of smashed worlds and stars! These were mighty, symmetrical shapes of smooth metal, each an elongated oval in form and with rounded ends, each a great ship as large or larger than our own! The front end of each of these great oval ships glowed with white light, the light-points we had glimpsed from above, since the front end of each was transparent-walled like our own pilot room, and brilliantly lit inside. In those white-lit pilot rooms we could half glimpse, as we flashed along, masses of strange machinery and switches, and stranger beings that seemed to move about them, apparently directing the course and speed of their great ships as the whole mighty swarm of them rushed on through space, toward the galaxy's suns ahead.

"Space-ships!" My exclamation held all the stunned amazement that had gripped us all. "Space-ships in thousands from the outer void-"

Before I could complete the thought that was flashing across my mind there was a cry from Jhul Din, beside me, and I wheeled about to find him pointing downward, gazed swiftly down to see that a score or more of the great, strange ships beneath were suddenly slanting up toward us, as we raced along above them. With the swiftness of thought they flashed up toward us, and I had a lightning vision of the white-lit pilot rooms at the nose of each, rushing toward us like blurs of brilliant light. Then, as I shouted aloud, Korus Kan swung the controls in his grasp with lightning speed, and instantly our ship flashed sidewise in a twisting turn.

Even as we swerved, though, there leapt from the foremost of the up-rushing craft a pale broad beam of ghostly white light that stabbed up toward and past us, grazing our ship, and that struck the foremost of the ships of our squadron behind us. I saw the broad beam strike that ship squarely, saw it playing on and through it, and for a moment could see no effect apparent. Then, as the great pale beam played across the ship in a swift slicing sweep, I saw that as it shone through that ship's pilot room the figures inside it suddenly vanished! The next moment the ship had suddenly driven crazily off into space, whirling blindly away without occupant or crew, all life in it wiped instantly from existence by that terrible death-beam that had played through it! Now the attacking ships were leaping up toward us, flashing up lightning-like with ghostly beams of death whirling and stabbing about and toward us, and now, over the wild clamor of sudden battle in the hull beneath, I heard the great cry of Jhul Din, beside me.

"Space-ships in thousands, and they're attacking us! They've come from somewhere toward our galaxy-have come out of intergalactic space itself to attack our universe!"

2: Chased Through the Void

The moment of swift, terrific battle that followed was to me then only a wild uproar of flashing action and hoarse shouts, as the mighty ships beneath leapt up toward us. It was only another sudden twisting turn of our ship by Korus Kan that saved us from annihilation in that wild first moment of combat, since the score or more of pale, deadly beams from beneath, stabbing past us as we twisted, struck the ships of our squadron behind and in another moment had sent half of them reeling blindly and aimlessly out of sight, driving haphazardly off into space as the ghostly beams annihilated all the life inside them. Then, as we raced still through space above the mighty swarm, the score of attacking ships suddenly divided, a dozen of them driving up toward the ships behind us while the remainder flashed toward us, their great, pale rays still stabbing and slicing as they leapt on.

Even as our ship swerved from the pale beams leaping up toward us, though, I had shouted an order into the tube beside me, and now from our own craft there stabbed down toward the upward-rushing ships a half-dozen long, narrow rays of brilliant red light. Four of the ships below were struck squarely by those brilliant rays, and from our crew came shouts of triumph as those four vanished in blinding flares of crimson light. It was the deadly ray of the Interstellar Patrol, destroying all matter it touched by raising its frequency of vibration, since matter itself is but a certain frequency vibration of the ether, and when that frequency is raised to that of light-vibrations the matter is changed in that moment from solid matter to light.

Even in the moment that the four ships vanished beneath our rays, though, I had glanced backward and had seen the last of the ships of our squadron behind vanishing in a wild chaos of whirling death-beam and crimson ray, since scores of other ships were leaping up to attack us from the mighty swarm far beneath. Toward us now, it seemed, ships were flashing from every direction, and I heard the hissing of the ray-tubes below as our crimson rays burned out to meet them, saw three more of them flare and vanish, glimpsed a dozen shafts of the death-beam graze past us as Korus Kan twisted our ship in an erratic, corkscrew course. Not for moments longer, though, I knew, could we keep up this wild and unequal battle, since the mass of ships behind that had annihilated our squadron were now leaping after us. Our only chance was in flight.

I shouted to Korus Kan, and then, as scores of the ghostly beams swept through the void toward us, I saw him swerve the control-levers in his hands sharply sidewise, so that our ship abruptly turned squarely to the right, away from the great swarm and the attacking ships about us. It was a maneuver that caught those ships off their guard, and traveling as we were at the terrific velocity of five hundred light-speeds, it put millions of miles of space between us and the great swarm before the attacking ships could realize what we had done. In a split-second they had vanished from sight about us and we were again rushing on through black and empty space, turning now, and again heading toward the galaxy's far-flung suns. But, as I gazed anxiously at the big space-chart, I saw that now the great swarm of black dots upon it had slanted from their former course and was heading straight after the single dot that was our ship. By means of their own space-charts, which I knew they must have, they had discovered our trick and were in pursuit.

"Let her out to full speed," I cried to Korus Kan. "They're after us and our only chance is to get to the galaxy ahead of them."

Instantly Korus Kan opened wide the power-controls, and with a mounting humming roar our great ship went rapidly into its highest speed, its great generators flinging it on through the ether at a thousand times the velocity of light, propelling it headlong onward toward the galaxy that lay still far ahead, its mighty disk-like mass of shining suns stretched across the blackness of space before us. And behind us rushed the great swarm, too, racing on after us and toward the galaxy still. I knew that the speed of that mighty swarm of ships must be inconceivably greater than that of our own, since we ourselves had seen them on our charts racing in toward the galaxy from outer space with velocity unthinkable, a velocity which we had thought could only be due to some great ether-current, and which they had only slackened as they drew near the galaxy. There was a slender chance, though, that we might yet escape, and now as we rushed on toward the galaxy in headlong flight I turned quickly to the speech-projection instrument beside me, pressing a button in its base. A moment later there came from it a clear, twanging voice.

"General Patrol Headquarters at Canopus," it announced, and swiftly I responded.

"Dur Nal, Captain of Patrol Squadron 598-77, speaking," I said. "I desire to report the discovery of a swarm of some five thousand strange space-ships which have appeared out of intergalactic space, heading toward the galaxy. These ships are apparently capable of immense speeds and are armed with a form of death-beam unfamiliar to us, but extremely deadly in operation. On discovering these ships we were attacked by them and all of my squadron except my own ship destroyed. Our own ship is now being chased inward toward the galaxy, heading in the general direction of the Cancer cluster, and though the swarm is gradually overhauling us we may be able to escape. From the size, number and deadly armament of these alien ships it is apparent that they contemplate a general attack upon our universe."

There was a moment's pause when I had finished, and then from the speech-instrument there came the metallic voice again, as calm as though I had made only a routine report of position and progress.

"Order of Lacq Larus, Chief of the Interstellar Patrol, to Dur Nal. You will make every effort to elude the pursuing swarm, and if you can do so will endeavor to draw it into the Cancer cluster. All the cruisers of the Interstellar Patrol will be assembled inside the cluster as swiftly as possible, and if you are successful in drawing the pursuing swarm inside it will be possible for our fleet to fall upon it in an unexpected attack, and destroy these invaders, whatever their source or purpose, before they can obtain a foothold in the galaxy. You have the order?"

"I have the order," I replied, as calmly as possible, and with a word of acknowledgment the twanging voice ceased.

I wheeled around to Korus Kan and Jhul Din, a flame of excitement leaping within me. "It's a chance to destroy them all." I exclaimed. "If we can hold out until we reach the galaxy-can lead them into that cluster-"

Their own eyes were afire now as they saw the chance, and now Korus Kan tightened his grasp on the controls, gazing grimly ahead with power open to the last notch, while Jhul Din strode swiftly out of the pilot room and down to the ship's hull beneath, where, in a moment more, I heard his deep voice booming out orders to the crew as they labored to wring from our throbbing generators the last ounce of speed. Yet now, too, looking up at the big space-chart, I saw that the gap on it between our single little ship-dot and the great swarm of dots behind was terrifyingly small, a gap of less than a half-inch which represented no more than a few billion miles of space. And slowly, steadily, that gap was closing, as the great swarm slowly overhauled us. With their immense potential speed they could have flashed past us in a moment, had they so desired, yet I knew too that they dared not use such terrific speed so near the galaxy, and that even did they use it we would be able to turn and double before they could slow down enough to catch us. Their plan, it was obvious, was simply to overhaul us slowly until they had just reached us, and then sweep down on us with the death-beams while we strove in vain to escape them.

So at our utmost speed we flashed on through the void toward the galaxy, a mighty belt of burning suns across the blackness before us, and toward the close-massed cluster of suns at its edge that shone among the scattered stars around it like a solid ball of light, while there rushed after us through space at the same mighty speed the great swarm of strange craft which we were attempting to lead into that cluster.

* * *

Surely in all time was never so strange a flight, a pursuit, as this one-a flight inward through the void with unimaginable beings from the mysteries of infinite outer space as our pursuers, flashing on in thousands on our track, toward us and toward the galaxy they meant to attack.

Far ahead in that galaxy, too, I knew, its forces would be preparing to meet that attack, and from the central sun of Canopus the alarm would be flashing out across our universe from star to star, from world to whirling world, flashing in warning from end to end of the galaxy, to all the stars and worlds and races of the Federated Suns. And even while that warning flashed, the great star-cruisers of the Interstellar Patrol would be gathering in answer, would be rushing headlong between the suns across the galaxy from every quarter of it to mass in force inside the Cancer cluster. Could we escape the pursuing swarm and lead it into that cluster it would still be hours, I knew, before we reached it, even at our tremendous speed, and in those hours all the fighting-ships of the galaxy would be racing toward the rendezvous there and massing to meet this mighty invading fleet.

Could we escape? The thought beat monotonously through my brain as I stood there with Korus Kan, silent as the Antarian as we watched the great swarm of dots creep closer and closer to us on the space-chart. On and on our ship was racing, the throbbing generators now making the whole ship vibrate with their vast power, and visibly the galaxy's shining suns were largening ahead as we flashed on toward them; yet as the minutes passed, forming into an hour, and then another, the great swarm behind crept ever remorselessly closer. Rocking and swaying as we plunged through great ether-currents, we held still straight toward the Cancer cluster, at the galaxy's edge ahead; yet still we had covered no more than two-thirds of the distance that had separated us from it, and now the great swarm was no more than a few million miles behind, a mere fraction of an inch on the space-chart.

It was as though our pursuers were but playing with us, so calmly and steadily did they overtake us, and in despair I turned from the galaxy's mighty rampart of stars, ahead, to the rear distance-windows. A moment more, I knew, and the thousands of ships behind would be drawing into sight in those windows, would be speeding down upon us even as we sought to flee and would annihilate us with an attack which we could not hope to escape a second time. Hopelessly I gazed back into the blackness of space behind, but then wheeled back suddenly as there came a sudden exclamation from Korus Kan. He had swerved our flying ship's course a little and was pointing up toward the space-chart now, his strange eyes agleam with excitement.

"If we can make it, it's a chance to throw them off our track," he exclaimed, and as I gazed up toward the space-chart I suddenly understood.

On that chart our single ship-dot was rushing on toward the glowing circles of the galaxy's suns, with the mighty swarm of black dots that were our pursuers close behind, and now I saw that a little ahead of our own ship-dot there hung stationary on the chart another dot, one not of black but of red. Instantly I recognized it as one of the great Space-buoys hung in space to mark the positions of the mighty ether-maelstroms which were the most perilous of all the menaces to interstellar navigation. Formed by the meeting of vast ether-currents, these maelstroms had been marked for all space-navigators by placing near each a special spaceship, or buoy, which automatically and without crew kept its position, showing as a red dot on all space-charts to warn passing ships of the maelstrom's position. The great maelstrom ahead, I knew, was one of the mightiest of all in and around our galaxy, and now as our ship sped straight through space toward it I saw Korus Kan's plan and caught my breath with sudden hope.

"We'll head straight toward the maelstrom, and then swerve aside just before we reach it," he was saying. "The swarm behind can have no knowledge of its existence, and if they run into it before they can change their course it'll delay them, at least."

Tensely I watched now as our ship raced on, the humming roar of its generators rising a half-pitch still higher as Jhul Din, beneath, drove the crew to their last strength to win another light-speed. A scant few million miles ahead the great maelstrom lay, marked only by the red dot on the chart, and as we sped straight on toward that dot our ship already was rocking and bucking as we drove through the mighty ether-currents whose meeting formed the maelstrom. Braced against the room's wall we stood, eyes straining ahead through the darkness and against the glare of the galaxy's suns in the distance, and then, as I turned to glance back, I saw that behind us now there gleamed in the blackness points of shining light, points that were swiftly largening and nearing us, countless in number and driving through space straight on our track. With each fleeting moment they were flashing nearer toward us, and now were so near that through the distance-window I could plainly make out their white-lit pilot rooms as they drove after us. A moment more, I knew, would see them close enough to loose the death-beams upon us, but at that moment there was a half-breathed exclamation from Korus Kan, and I turned swiftly about.

He was gripping the controls tensely, gazing forward into the blackness that lay between us and the galaxy, and even as I turned I saw that our ship-dot had flashed past the red danger-dot on the space-chart. Instantly then Korus Kan twisted the controls sharply to the left, and immediately our craft was flashing off in a great curve from the path it had been following, veering suddenly toward the left while the great swarm just behind us raced still for the moment straight ahead. Then, before they could swerve aside to follow us, I had a single flashing glimpse through the window of the whole mighty swarm suddenly disintegrating, shattering, the thousands of ships that made it up suddenly whirling away in all directions in blind chaos of aimless movement as they rushed straight into the mighty ether-maelstrom into which we had led them. Then they had vanished, whirling blindly about, as we flashed on out of sight, our own craft swaying wildly as we drove on through the great currents about the maelstrom. On the space-chart, though, I saw the great swarm's pursuit for the moment had ceased, the myriad dots that made it up milling aimlessly about in the mighty maelstrom's grip while our single ship-dot raced straight on.

"A chance," I cried, as our ship flashed on toward the galaxy's suns. "A chance yet-if we can get to the Cancer cluster before them!"

* * *

Now our cruiser was again flashing on at its very highest speed, straight toward that cluster, while behind us the great swarm whirled chaotically about. Before us the galaxy's suns were burning out in waxing splendor as we shot through space toward them, the cluster of closer-packed suns that was our goal changing now from a ball of solid light into a ball-like mass of thronging, flaming stars as we drew nearer it. But as Jhul Din came back into the pilot room from beneath, as we three contemplated the space-chart and then the great wall of suns in the blackness ahead, our faces set again after our brief triumph, for we knew that billions of miles of space lay still between us and those suns. And now, too, we saw on the chart that the great swarm of ships behind had escaped from the maelstrom's grip at last and was racing after us once more in swift pursuit, a hundred of their ships in the van now of that pursuit with the main body of the swarm behind.

"It's the last stretch!" I exclaimed, as we gazed tensely at the chart and into the void ahead. "Unless we get to the Cancer cluster ahead of them now it's the end."

Our ship was leaping forward still at its uttermost speed, its strained generators functioning nobly, but the great swarm behind was again picking up speed itself, the hundred ships massed together a few million miles ahead of the main swarm hardly more than an inch behind our own ship-dot on the space-chart. On-on-straight toward the fiery mass of the Cancer cluster we fled, while behind us, in cruel repetition of the first part of this wild chase the pursuing ships slowly cut down the gap between us, the hundred foremost ones leaping every moment closer toward us, while behind them the main swarm came on more deliberately. Ahead now the galaxy filled the heavens before us, myriads of burning stars that gemmed the infinite night with their flaming brilliance, but of all in the stupendous scene around and before us we had eyes only for the thronging suns of the Cancer cluster, and for the space-chart above us.

On-on-the minutes of that mad onward flight were passing each like an eternity as we leapt forward, tensely braced there in the pilot room, peering forward, with behind us the hundred pursuing ships close on our track, remorselessly overtaking us, with behind them the great swarm of thousands of ships that were driving to attack our universe. Ahead of us, I knew, there somewhere in the flaming cluster of suns before us, the cruisers of the great Interstellar Patrol, the warships of our universe, would be gathering and massing to meet that great invading fleet, but unless we could escape and lead it into the cluster where they waited they would have no chance for a surprise attack. Before us by now the great cluster lay in waxing, flaming splendor, only a scant few billion miles ahead, its thronging, gathered suns burning out in supreme glory amid the galaxy's looser-swarming suns, but now the hundred foremost ships of the mighty swarm behind were almost upon us.

Even as I turned, now, toward the distance-window behind me, I heard a deep exclamation from Jhul Din, who had turned to gaze back also, and as I too gazed through that window a chill seemed to creep through my very blood, for light-points were showing there in the blackness behind, and drawing swiftly nearer. It was the hundred foremost ships! Ever closer they were racing toward us, overtaking us again with every moment, while far behind them the main swarm raced on after them. With each passing moment the light-points behind were broadening, brightening, as the ships came closer, but now the great cluster ahead loomed full before us, its myriads of flaming, thundering suns drenching all in our pilot room in their fierce, terrific glare. Straight ahead of us, at the mighty cluster's outmost edge, flamed a great double star among all the other thronging stars that made it up, two giant white suns separated only by a comparatively narrow gap. And straight toward that narrow gap our fleeing ship was heading.

Behind us now the hundred long oval ships were drawing into plain sight, their white-lit pilot rooms giving us brief glimpses inside of massed machinery and slender beings we could but half-glimpse that moved inside. From the foremost of those ships, now, there stabbed out toward us the broad, pale, ghostly beam of death, but as yet the gap between us was too wide for the beam to bridge, and we flashed onward still, the gleaming shapes of our pursuers leaping still closer. Before us now the whole firmament seemed a wild chaos of gigantic suns, as we raced straight in toward the mighty cluster, with ahead the narrow gap that separated the two giant white suns toward which we were heading.

Jhul Din gripped my shoulder, pointed ahead, shouted to me over the roar of our generators. "Unless we slacken speed we'll never make it through that gap without driving into one of the suns," he cried.

I shook my head. "It's death either way!" I yelled to him. "Our only chance is to drive between them at full speed."

Now before us the whole heavens seemed a single vast sheet of boiling white flame as we drove in toward the two mighty thundering suns, the gaps between them seeming no more than a narrow black cleft at the terrific velocity at which we were moving. At our topmost speed we rushed toward that narrow gap, the ships behind still leaping full upon our track, closing swiftly down upon us now. And now, as Korus Kan braced himself and held our controls still steady, we were flashing squarely in between the two gigantic suns. On either side of us they towered, thundering, boiling upright oceans of devouring, brilliant white flame, whose awful glare all but blinded us, seeming to fill all the universe about us with one great mass of raging fires. Out toward our onward-flashing ship there licked from the great suns on either side titanic tongues of flame bursting out toward us for millions of miles, huge prominences that could have licked up worlds like midges, but straight on between the walling fires our throbbing ship still flashed.

Now the hundred ships behind, still after us through that hell of light and flame, were racing down upon us even as we sped between the giant flaming suns, and now from behind shot shaft upon shaft of the pale death-beams, hardly to be seen in the awful blinding glare. As the beams sprang toward us, though, Korus Kan swerved to the left, and for a moment it seemed that we had swerved from death in one form only to meet it in another, since at our terrific speed we veered millions of miles in that moment toward the left gigantic sun. Its boiling fires were all about us, seemed to encompass us, and then just as it seemed that we were racing into the mighty glowing corona to our deaths Korus Kan had swerved our ship backward into the center of the narrow gap. And now we were reaching that gap's end, were passing from between the giant suns, and out into more open space inside the great cluster, with the pursuing ships again leaping forward to loose their deadly beams.

Out from between the two great suns we flashed, before us now the interior of the mighty cluster, a great swarm of flaming suns that thronged space all about us, and about many of which swung great families of planets, dozens of whirling worlds. Even as we shot into the interior of the great cluster, though, from between the two giant suns, the hundred pursuing craft had leaped forward upon us with one great burst of sudden speed, were behind us, on each side, all about us. It was the end, we knew, and there was an instant of sheer silence as we waited for that end, waited for the pale beams of death from the ships about us. But before they could loose those beams there flashed suddenly upon them from each side other ships, two mighty masses of ships like our own, that burst suddenly out upon our pursuers from behind the two great suns between which we had just come. Ships like our own! Ships long and slender and gleaming! Ships of the Interstellar Patrol, striking at the vanguard of the invaders in defense of our universe.

3: Death-Beam and Crimson Ray

Even as the great masses of ships on each side leapt out upon our pursuers, Korus Kan had glimpsed them, and had swung our own ship instantly around in a great curve. On each side of us, now, were the thousands of cruisers of the great patrol, and before us were the hundred ships that had chased us in toward the galaxy through space. Before those ships could recover from their surprise, before their occupants could realize the trap into which they had ventured, our whole vast fleet was leaping upon them from both sides, flashing down upon the hundred invading craft before they could turn from their onward flight.

Down with them swooped our own ship now, and we shouted aloud as we saw from all the swooping ships about us, as from our own, myriad brilliant shafts of the brilliant red ray flashing down and striking the enemy ships ahead and below. Within an instant, it seemed, half those racing ships had flared and vanished in brilliant bursts of crimson light, while the rest had dipped and turned in a wild effort to escape. Back toward the two great white suns they raced, seeking to escape between them into outer space again, to rejoin the oncoming main swarm of their great fleet, but down before and ahead of them leapt our Patrol cruisers, the red rays again whirling and cutting in great circles of death. And now as they vanished one by one beneath those rays, struggling still through space toward the two great suns, the death beams of the remaining ships sprang savagely up toward us, and I saw cruisers here and there in our own fleet driving aimlessly off, smashing into one another and whirling blindly away as the beams wiped out all life in them.

But now we were leaping after the fleeing ships between the great suns again, and as we shot after them through those terrific walls of flame our rays again took toll of them; so that as we flashed out from between the two mighty suns and into outer space once more but a scant half-dozen of them remained, and these leapt instantly forward and out into the blackness of outer space to rejoin the main body of their approaching fleet, while we in turn sprang after them in hot pursuit, though our ships were not capable of the tremendous speeds of those invading ones.

"Score for us!" cried Jhul Din as our ships flashed on. "We've all but wiped out those hundred."

"Wait," I told him. "The main body of their fleet's coming on toward us-"

Even as I spoke I saw the ship of Lacq Larus, Chief of the Patrol, the flag-ship of our fleet, slackening its speed ahead of us, and a moment later there came from a speech-instrument beside me his clear, unruffled voice:

"All ships halt and mass in battle formation!" he ordered; and at once, in answer to that command, our flashing ships slowed and stopped, forming instantly into three thick, short columns and hanging motionless in space.

On the space-chart above, now, we could see the mass of thousands of dots that was our fleet hanging motionless a little out from the galaxy's edge, and could see, too, a little outward from that mass of dots, another and equally large mass, that moved slowly in toward us, the great swarm that was the invading fleet. Already the few fleeing survivors of our hundred pursuers had raced back into that main swarm, and now, moving ever more slowly but coming steadily forward, it was driving through space toward us. The great swarm was moving still in a triangular formation, the triangle's apex toward us, and now at last, as we stared forward into the blackness, we made out light-points ahead, a vast swarm of them in that steady triangular formation, moving deliberately toward us.

Slowly now those light-points were largening, were changing into great, gleaming ships as their fleet came on toward us. Ever more slowly it moved, now at but a fraction of a light-speed, for it was evident that they, like us, sought no fight-and-run skirmish but a battle to the finish. At last they had stopped, had halted just out of ray-reach ahead and were hanging motionless in space like ourselves, facing us. And then, for a moment, it seemed as though about us was an unbroken stillness and silence, as the two mighty fleets, numbering each fully five thousand ships, faced each other there in space.

I think that never in all space and time could there have been a moment as strange as that one, when the mighty fleet of our galaxy lay prow to prow with this other mighty fleet from the dark, unguessed mysteries of outer space. All about us lay the cold, lightless blackness of the eternal void, with the great galaxy's colossal rampart of flaming suns stretched across the heavens behind us alone blazing in that blackness, the great Cancer cluster at its edge, just behind us, flaming with all the glory of its mass of gathered suns. A single instant that silence and stillness reigned in the stupendous scene about us, an instant that to our strained nerves seemed endless, and then a sharp order rang from the speech-instrument beside me, and as one our great fleet leapt forward while the opposing fleet sprang to meet us. The battle was on.

I saw the enemy fleet flashing straight toward us, the apex of its triangle pointed full at our center, and knew instinctively that it meant to cut us into halves with the great wedge that was itself. But as it flashed straight toward us and upon us there rang another order from the instrument at my side, and instantly our three short columns of ships veered to the right, changing in a moment into one long column, which instead of meeting the onrushing triangle flashed along its side. As we shot past thus I had a lightning glimpse of the masses of countless oval ships racing by, glimpsed too a score or more of ships at the center of their fleet that seemed not oval but round and disk-like in shape, and then forgot all else as from all our ships there burst the brilliant red rays, raking the side of their fleet with a deadly fire as we flashed past it. Then scores upon scores of their ships were vanishing in crimson flares of light as those rays found them, and though their death-beams found our own ships here and there as we flashed by, the great mass of their ships dared not loose their beams upon us lest they destroy their own ships, so skillful had been our maneuver.

Only a moment did it last, that passing of the two fleets with red ray and death-beam crossing, and then we were past them, were turning and circling and racing back upon them to deliver another blow. Ahead we could see the enemy fleet turning and racing back to meet us, with beyond them the great suns of the galaxy flaming in the blackness of space, and again we leapt straight toward them there in the abysmal void; but this time they had anticipated our maneuver and as we swerved to the right of them their whole great fleet swerved right also, so that in order to avoid a head-on collision with their fleet we were forced to swerve still farther to the right, our long column racing along through space now parallel to the galaxy's edge, with the enemy ships strung in a similar column between us and the galaxy, racing along with us through space at the same speed as ourselves, their pale ghostly beams whirling toward us even as our crimson shafts cut through the void toward them.

Ships on each side were vanishing, now, some flaring in wild explosions of red light and disappearing as the scarlet rays found them, others driving crazily and aimlessly away as the pale beams wiped out in an instant all the crews inside them. But now we found ourselves at a disadvantage, for our enemy's gleaming ships could hardly be made out against the flaring suns of the galaxy, beyond them, while our own glittering cruisers stood out clearly against the darkness of outer space. It was an advantage of which they took swift use, for now the broad pale beams were reaching toward us in increasing numbers as we flashed along, while our own rays were all but ineffective, since, blinded as we were by the flaring suns behind the opposing ships, we could only loose the rays at random.

On still we raced, along the galaxy's edge, the great Cancer cluster dropping behind us now as we sped on, our two great fleets striking and grappling with each other even as they flashed on. Black space and flaming suns, pale ray and red, oval ships and long cruisers, all mingled and whirled in that wild scene like the features of some tortured dream, but dream it was none to us, flashing on with our fleet while in the hull beneath our crew loosed their red rays of death upon the chance-seen enemy ships that flashed between us and the dazzling suns. At an order flashed from the Chief's flag-ship our whole fleet increased to its utmost velocity, striving to pass the enemy fleet and get between it and the galaxy again, but the immeasurable speed of these great invaders from outer space defeated our efforts. At the same speed as ourselves they raced forward, keeping always between us and the suns, and when we slowed our speed suddenly to fall behind them they instantly did likewise.

Meanwhile ships all about us were driving aimlessly away, reeling blindly off into space or smashing into each other, as the pale death-beams found more and more of them in that mad running fight. Not for many minutes longer, I knew, could the unequal contest be kept up. Already we were past the Cancer cluster, still racing along the galaxy's edge, and then abruptly there came another sharp order from the instrument beside me. Instantly, in obedience to that order, all our racing, battling ships slowed, swiftly grouped themselves into a triangular formation, its apex in turn pointing toward the long line of the enemy's fleet, between us and the galaxy. Then, before they could mass their own fleet again, our triangle of mighty cruisers had leapt straight toward the galaxy, its apex tearing full into the long line of their ships.

* * *

There was a moment of reeling, crashing shock, as our massed fleet crashed into that line, and all about me in that moment, it seemed, patrol-cruisers and oval ships were smashing into each other, colliding and bursting wildly there in mid-space. Then suddenly we were through, the mass of our fleet ripping through their line by main force; but now, as we smashed on through, another order sounded and we curved swiftly about, and still in that close-massed formation rushed back upon the shattered enemy line of ships. Before they could reform that broken line, before they could mass again in their own close formation, we were upon them, and then again our wedge-shaped mass was driving through them, shattering their disorganized masses still further and sending scores of them into annihilation now with our red rays as we flashed through.

"We've won!" shouted Jhul Din, at the window, as our massed fleet again wheeled and sped back upon the disorganized mass of ships before us. "We've won! We've broken up their fleet."

Now, though, we were rushing back to strike another deadly blow, and before us, I saw, that thousands of the invading ships were still milling aimlessly there in space, their organization shattered by the smashing blows we had dealt them. With red rays flashing we sped upon them again, but now, from the disorganized mass before us, I saw a score or more of ships rising, flashing upward with immense speed, ships that were not oval like the rest but flat and round and disk-like, ships that I had vaguely glimpsed in our first rush on the enemy fleet and which through all the battle they had kept protected from us at their fleet's center. Now, with all their terrific speed, the disk-ships were flashing upward, and even in the instant that we rushed again upon our enemies they had attained to a great height above us. In that instant I gave them but a glance, since again we were darting upon the mass of oval ships, our own cruiser now toward the rear of our fleet's formation. But in the next moment, even as we flashed on in our swift charge, I saw the score of disk-ships hanging high above suddenly glow and flicker with strange force, the whole great lower side of their big disks alive with a flickering, rippling, viridescent light. And at the same moment I saw the ships of our fleet ahead of us suddenly breaking from their mad charge forward and lifting slowly upward, saw them twisting and turning and reeling but still moving steadily up, toward those score of disk-ships high above, as though pulled upward by a mighty, unseen grip.

"Attraction-ships!" I shouted, as I saw what was happening.

"Those disk-ships above-they're pulling our cruisers up with some magnetic or electrical attractive force, that affects the metals of our ships but not of theirs."

We were still racing forward, at the rear of our fleet, but as I saw that all the thousands of our cruisers before us, almost, were in the grip of the attractive forces from above, were being pulled helplessly upward, I shouted to Korus Kan, and he shifted the controls swiftly sidewise, sending our cruiser veering away before it came beneath the disk-ships high above and was pulled up likewise. We had escaped for the moment, but now from ahead all the disorganized masses of the oval invading ships had gathered together again and were leaping forward, springing upon our own helpless masses of cruisers as they were pulled resistlessly upward. From all about those masses of twisting, turning cruisers the pale death-beams smote toward them, and only here and there could a few shafts of the red ray answer them, caught as our ships were in that tremendous grip.

Swiftly the cruisers of our fleet were being wiped clean of all the crews inside, as the death-beams swung and circled through them from all about. But a few score of cruisers at the rear of our fleet, like ourselves, had managed to escape the relentless grip of the disk-ships above, and now upon ourselves other masses of the oval ships were rushing. Wildly we battled there, the hordes of the invading ships spinning and flashing about us, but swiftly our few score of cruisers were sent reeling blindly off by the death-beams; and now, looking back an instant, I saw that the last of our mighty fleet of thousands of cruisers were being annihilated by the death-beams of the oval ships that swarmed about them, as they were drawn helplessly upward. We and a few other cruisers, struggling wildly there against the encircling masses of the oval ships, were all that remained of the galaxy's once mighty fleet.

Even as we fought there, with the mad energy of despair, I saw the last of our companion cruisers whirling away as the death-beams found it, and realized that except for a few stragglers here and there like our own ship the great fleet was annihilated, and that our only chance was in flight. With every moment the oval ships about us were increasing in number, completely encircling us, now, and it was only by a miracle of veering, twisting turns by Korus Kan that our ship was able to avoid the death-beams that reached toward us from all sides. Escape seemed impossible, so completely were we hemmed in by the circling, striking ships, and another moment would see our end, I knew; and so I wheeled, shouted hoarsely to Korus Kan.

"We'll have to break through them!" I shouted. "Give her full speed, Korus Kan, and head straight in toward the galaxy!"

Instantly he jerked open the power-control to the last notch, and as our ship leapt forward like a living thing toward the masses of ships that surrounded us he sent it driving straight toward the galaxy, and toward a spot where there showed a momentary gap between the ships that hemmed us in. But a single instant it took us to reach that gap, pale beams whirling all about us while our own red rays flashed sullenly forth, but in the instant that we reached it one of the oval ships had seen our intention and had leapt forward to close the gap. An instant too late it was to close it completely, but the oval ship's nose, containing its transparent-walled pilot room, lay across our path as we reached the gap, and straight into it we crashed.

* * *

There was a terrific, rending shock as our great prow tore into the transparent-walled nose of the enemy ship, and beneath that shock we saw the whole fore portion of the oval ship crumpling up and collapsing, reeling away a shattered wreck of metal. Our own cruiser rocked and swayed crazily at the collision, and for a moment it seemed that we too were doomed, but the next our battered ship leapt forward, and in an instant was free of the masses of oval ships that had encircled us, and was driving now in toward the galaxy's suns, with a score of the oval ships behind in hot pursuit.

In we drove, speeding now past the great Cancer cluster as we flashed at our utmost speed into the galaxy, its great ball of gathered suns flaring in the black heavens to our left as we sped inward. Behind came our pursuers, racing on close after us; and now, glancing back beyond them, I saw the whole mighty fleet of the invaders, still fully three thousand ships in number, moving in toward the galaxy also, toward the great Cancer cluster, with its swarming suns and thronging worlds, saw the great fleet slowing, slanting down toward those suns, those worlds, and knew then that these invaders, having annihilated the galaxy's fleet, were settling upon the suns and worlds of the Cancer cluster as a first foothold in our universe, a base from which they could subdue all that universe. Then their fleet had vanished from our distance-windows as we fled on, and of the score of our pursuers all but three had turned back to rejoin that fleet.

The three remaining ships, though, drove straight on our track, and swiftly were overhauling us, though inside the galaxy they dared not use all their tremendous speed. Yet remorselessly after us they came, and I knew that moments more would see our end unless we could escape them. Directly ahead of us, though, there flamed a small crimson sun, a dying, planetless star not far inward from the Cancer cluster, largening each moment before us as we drove on toward it with terrific speed. As I saw it a last plan flashed through my brain, and I turned to Korus Kan.

"Head straight toward that sun," I told him. "It's our only chance-to get in close and lose them in its corona."

He nodded grimly, swerving the ship a little, and now straight toward the red star we raced, Jhul Din and I gazing out with him toward it as we flashed on, and then behind to where the gleaming three ships of the invaders drove after us. Swiftly they were overtaking us, two close behind us and the remaining one a little behind the two, but ahead the crimson star was filling almost all the heavens, now, a great sea of fiery red flame that stretched above and beneath us, ahead, as though occupying all the firmament. Its glare was awful, now, for we were racing straight in toward the mighty corona of it, the glowing outer atmosphere of radiant heat about it in which, I knew, no ship, however heat-resistant, could live for more than a moment. On we raced, our cruiser creaking and swaying still from the effects of the collision with the ship we had smashed into, but flashing on with unabated speed.

Behind us, the three gleaming shapes of our pursuers were following with unslackened speed, too, gradually drawing nearer, the two foremost of those ships just behind us, now. Another moment and their death-beams would stab toward us, and though we might destroy one or even two of them the other would surely destroy us before we could turn to it, I knew. The heat, too, of the great star before us was penetrating into our ship, and full before us, not a dozen million miles ahead, glowed the great corona. On we flashed-on-on-and then, just as we were about to burst into the terrible, glowing corona, just as the two ships close behind us sprang closer to stab with their beams toward us, Korus Kan jerked the controls suddenly back, and instantly our ship shot upward in a great vertical rush, while beneath, before they could see and follow our change of course, the two racing oval ships pursuing us had flashed on and into the mighty glare of the corona. Then we glimpsed them shriveling, twisting, vanishing, in the awful heat there, while our own cruiser turned now away from the red sun.

Beneath we saw the single remaining oval ship turning, too, since it had been far enough behind the two to change its course in time to avoid the terrible corona. It seemed to pause, hesitate, and then, as though satisfied that our ship too had met death in the corona with its own two companions, it began to flash backward toward the galaxy's edge, toward the Cancer cluster where the mighty invading fleet had settled. And now, burning for revenge, our own cruiser was slanting back with it and down toward it, as it drove on unsuspectingly beneath. Another moment and we would be above it, would loose our red rays on it before ever it suspected our existence. I was breathing with relief at our escape, now, and heard an exulting cry from Jhul Din as he strode down into the cruiser's hull from the pilot room, to direct the ray-tubes there, but the next moment all our triumph vanished, for from our cruiser's hull, toward its battered prow, there came suddenly a succession of appalling cracks.

Standing suddenly tense we listened, and then, as there came from beneath a prolonged, cracking roar, I heard shouts of fear from our crew, and then Jhul Din had burst up into the pilot room from beneath.

"The cruiser's walls are giving!" he cried. "That collision with the oval ship when we smashed our way out strained and wrenched loose the whole prow and side-walls-the cruiser can't hold together for five minutes more!"

There was a stunned silence in the little room then, a silence in which it seemed that all the disasters that had befallen us were crowding together upon us, overpowering us. This was the end, I knew. Within minutes more the walls about us would collapse and in the infinite cold and emptiness of interstellar space we would meet our deaths. We were hours away from the nearest friendly planet, with all our companion ships destroyed. It was the end, and for a moment I bowed to the inevitable, stood in stunned despair awaiting that end. But then, as my eyes fell upon the oval ship beneath, toward which our collapsing cruiser was still slanting downward, I saw that upon its broad metal back was the round circle of a space-door, like the double space-doors of our own ship, and as I saw that, all the ancient combativeness that has carried men out into the remotest of the galaxy's depths surged up in me, and I wheeled around to the other two.

"Order all our crew down to the cruiser's lower space-door," I cried, "and have an emergency space-suit issued to each of them."

They stared at me, strangely, tensely. "What are you going to do?" asked Jhul Din, at last, and my answer came out in a shout:

"We're going to do what never yet has been done in all the battles between the stars!" I told him. "We're going to put our lives on one last mad chance and board that enemy ship in mid-space!"

4: A Struggle Between the Stars

A moment there was silence in the pilot room, a silence of sheer surprise, in which my two lieutenants gazed at me in utter amazement, and then from Jhul Din came a great shout.

"It's a chance," he cried. "If we can do it we'll escape yet."

"Down to the space-door at once, then," I told him. "The ship can't last for seconds now."

For even then there had come to our ears another long, cracking roar as our battered walls gave still farther. Now Jhul Din was racing down from the pilot room to assemble the crew, and now our cruiser was slanting still farther down toward the long, gleaming oval ship beneath. Down we slanted, until our own swaying cruiser hung at a distance of a score of feet above the enemy ship, which, believing us destroyed, never dreamed of our presence as we raced on through space at the same speed as itself. And now Korus Kan hastily set the automatic controls in the pilot room that would hold our cruiser at the same speed and course without guiding hand, and then we too hurled ourselves down the narrow stair, through the big power room where the great generators were still throbbing on, down through the succession of compartments in the cruiser's hull until we had reached the long, low room that lay at its very bottom, and in the floor of which was set the cruiser's lower space-door.

In the long room all our crew was gathered now, with Jhul Din at their head, a hundred odd in number, and a strange enough aggregation they were, drawn as they were from the far-different races of the galaxy's peopled stars. Octopus-beings from Vega, great plant-men from Capella, spider-shapes from Mizar-these and a score or more of differing forms and shapes stood before me, listening in disciplined silence as I briefly explained our plan. About us the walls were wrenching and cracking fearfully, but when I had finished those before me raised a fierce shout, and then each of us was hastily climbing into the emergency space-suits which were kept always in all interstellar ships in case outside repairs to it were necessary in mid-space.

A moment more and we all stood attired in the hermetically sealed, clumsy-looking suits of thick, flexible metal, with head-pieces of metal in which were transparent vision-plates. As we donned them each pressed the button which set the little air-generators inside each suit pouring forth their supply of fresh air and purifying the breathed air; and then, with a swift glance around that showed each in his suit, I motioned to Jhul Din and at once the big Spican pressed the stud in the wall that sent the round space-door in the floor sliding open.

We could not feel through our insulating suits the tremendous cold that instantly invaded the ship, but we heard plainly the swift, terrific swish of air about us as it rushed out of the ship into the mighty void outside. Now, looking down through the open door, we could see a score of feet beneath the broad metal back of the great oval ship, still racing on unsuspectingly beneath us. I turned back to the crew about me, saw that each had gripped one of the metal bars that were to be our only weapons in this attempt, since the use of rays would destroy the ship beneath, which was our only hope of life. Then, reaching forth again to the switchcase on the wall, Jhul Din at my motion threw off the cruiser's gravity-control, so that the attraction-plates built into the floor beneath us, which pulled us always downward and enabled us to walk upright and normally inside the cruiser, no longer pulled us. Instead, though, we were being pulled down now by the gravitational force of the racing ship beneath and a step through the open door would send any of us hurtling down toward that ship.

Now I gave one last glance around, even while the cruiser's walls cracked terribly again, and then swung myself over the edge of the opening in the floor, hanging by my hands from it and swinging there in the infinite void of interstellar space a score of feet above the oval ship's broad metal back. It seemed, that moment that I swung there, a time of endless length, and surely never before had any hung thus between two ships racing on through the void. Then, as another cracking roar came from the walls about me, I loosed my hold upon the edge and hurtled down through empty space toward the back of the ship below.

Down, down-that fall seemed endless as I rushed down through space, but unimpeded as I was by air-resistance it was but an instant before I had slammed down on the ship's broad back, lying motionless for an instant and then rising carefully to a sitting position. Just above me hung our racing cruiser, the opening in its bottom directly overhead, and in another moment Korus Kan had followed me, striking the ship's back beside me while I gripped him and held him tightly. Then came one of the crew, and another, and another, until in a moment the last of them was dropping down among us, Jhul Din alone remaining above. He stepped toward the opening, to lower himself and drop down to us likewise, but even as he did so I saw the great walls of the cruiser above collapsing and buckling inward as they gave at last. I motioned frantically to Jhul Din as the walls collapsed about him, saw him give one startled glance around, and then as the cruiser's sides crumpled up about him he ran forward and leapt cleanly through the opening in the floor, hurtling down toward us and striking full in our midst, just as the crumpled cruiser above, the power of its generators gone with its collapse, jerked sharply out of sight toward the crimson sun behind, hurtling away from us a twisted wreck of metal.

* * *

It was with something of a tightness in my throat that I saw the wreck of our familiar, faithful ship drive away from us, but I turned toward our own desperate situation. We were clinging to the back of the great oval ship as it drove on toward the Cancer cluster, with above and all about us the blackness of the void, and the galaxy's flaming suns. Ahead shone the gathered suns of the great cluster, and I knew that we must capture the ship soon if at all; so now, half creeping and half walking, we made our way along the great ship's back toward the round space-door set midway along that back. In a moment we were clustered about it, and found it closed tightly from within, as I had expected. Instantly, though, we set to work on it with the metal bars and tools we had brought with us, drilling down through the thick metal of the door while we clung, like a hundred odd tiny mites, upon the mighty ship's back as it flashed on and on.

What might lie in the ship beneath, what manner of beings might these terrible invaders be, we could not even guess, but it was our one chance to penetrate inside, and frantically we worked. Within moments more we had drilled through in a dozen places, were swinging aside the great bolts that held the door closed inside, and then were sliding it open and dropping swiftly down inside. We heard a little rush of air outward as the door opened, and knew that this ship was inhabited by air-breathing beings, at least, and then we found ourselves in the room beneath the space-door, a bare little vestibule chamber in whose side was a single square door.

Before opening this, however, we closed the round space-door above us, plugging the holes we had drilled in it by driving in sections of metal bar, and then I turned toward the door in the wall, felt carefully around it, and finally pressed a small white plate inset beside it, at which it slid silently aside. We stepped through it, bars raised ready for action. We were in a corridor, a long corridor apparently running the length of the great oval ship, but quite empty for the moment. The throbbing of great generators was loud in our ears, a throbbing much like that in our own ships but with another unfamiliar beating sound mingled with it. Silently we gazed about, then began to make our way down the corridor toward the ship's front end, toward the pilot room at its nose, stopping first to divest ourselves silently of the heavy space-suits, and then starting on.

Now we had come to an open door in the corridor's side, and peering cautiously through it we saw inside a long room holding a score or more of great, cylindrical mechanisms from which arose the throbbing and beating of the oval ship's operation. About these mechanisms were moving some two dozen of the ship's occupants, and as our eyes fell upon them we all but gasped aloud, so utterly strange and alien in shape were they even to us, who held strange shapes enough in our own gathering. Many and many a strange race had we of the Patrol seen in our long journeys through the galaxy, but all these were familiar and commonplace beside the shapes that moved in the room before us. For they were serpent-people.

Serpent people. Long, slender shapes of wriggling pale flesh, each perhaps ten feet in length and a foot in diameter, without arms or legs of any kind, writhing swiftly from place to place snakelike, and coiling an end of their strange bodies about any object which they wished to grip. Each end of the long, cylindrical bodies was cut squarely off, as it were, and in one such flat end of each were the only features-a pair of bulging, many-lensed eyes like those of an insect, big and glassy and unwinking, and a small black opening below that was the only orifice for their breathing. These were the beings who had come out of outer space to attack our universe! These were the beings who had annihilated the galaxy's fleet and were preparing now to seize the galaxy itself.

I turned from my horror-stricken contemplation of them to Jhul Din and Korus Kan, close behind me. "The pilot room," I whispered. "We'll make for it-get the ship's controls."

They nodded silently, and silently we stole past the open door and down the long corridor, toward the door at its end that we knew must lead into the pilot room at the ship's nose. Past other doors we crept, all of them fortunately closed, and as we stole on toward the door at the corridor's end I began to hope that at last our luck had turned. But ironically, even as I hoped, the door at the corridor's end, not a score of feet ahead, slid suddenly aside, and out of it, out of the pilot room beyond it, came one of the writhing serpent-creatures. It stopped short on seeing us, then gave vent to a strange, hissing cry, a high, sibilant call utterly strange to my ears, but at the sound of which the doors all along the corridor behind us slid swiftly open, while through them scores of the serpent-beings writhed out, and upon us.

"The pilot room!" I yelled, above the sudden hissing cries of the serpent-creatures and the shouts of our own crew. "Head for it, Jhul Din!"

Down the corridor we leapt, and out from the pilot room there came to meet us a half-dozen of the serpent-creatures, while one remained inside at the controls still. Then they were rushing toward us, and as they reached us were coiling about us, endeavoring to crush us by encircling us with their bodies and coiling with terrific power about us. As they did so, though, our own metal bars were crashing down among them, sending them to the corridor's floor in masses of crushed flesh as we plunged on toward the pilot room. Now we were through them, had crushed them before us, and were leaping through the door, the single serpent-creature inside wheeling to face us. Before he could spring upon us, though, Jhul Din had lifted him high above his head and then had flung him far down the corridor, where he struck against the wall and fell crushed to the floor. Then Korus Kan was leaping to the controls, swiftly scanning them and then twisting and shifting them, heading the racing ship around in a great curve, away from the Cancer cluster ahead and back in toward the galaxy's center, while Jhul Din and I now sprang back down the corridor to where our crew was struggling fiercely with the hordes of serpent-creatures rushing up from all parts of the ship.

Down that corridor, and down another, through rooms and halls and twisting stairways, down through all the great ship the battle raged, the serpent-creatures leaping and coiling about us with the courage of despair while we strode among them, metal bars smashing down in great strokes, mowing them down before us. Despite their overpowering numbers they were no match for us in such hand-to-hand fighting, and they dared not use ray-tubes, like ourselves, lest they destroy their own ship about them. So we forced them on, ever sending them down in crushed, lifeless masses, as they gradually gave way before us.

I will not tell all that happened in that red time of destruction, but quarter there could be none for these things that had come to attack our universe, that had destroyed our comrade ships in thousands; and so within a half-hour more the last of the serpent-creatures had perished and we were masters of the ship, though but a scant two score of us were left to operate it, so fierce had been the battle.

* * *

Our first action was to clear the ship of dead, casting them loose into space through the space-doors; then Jhul Din and I made our way back into the pilot room, where Korus Kan was holding the ship to a course inward into the galaxy. The controls, he had found, were very much like those of our own cruisers, but the great generators, as we found, were much different. Instead of setting up a vibration in the ether to fling the ship forward, as in our own cruisers, they projected a force which caused a shifting of the ether itself about the ship, forming a small, ceaseless ether-current which moved at colossal speed, bearing the ship with it. The speed could thus be raised or lowered at will by controlling the amount of force projected, and as the general nature of the generators was clear enough the remaining engineers of our crew took charge of them while we fled on into the galaxy.

"We'll head straight for Canopus," I said, indicating the great white star at the galaxy's center far ahead. "We'll report at once to the Council of Suns; our capture of this ship may be of use to them."

While I spoke Korus Kan had opened the power-control wider, and now our newly captured prize was racing through the void toward the mighty central white sun at thousands upon thousands of light-speeds, though I knew that even this terrific velocity, all that we dared use inside the galaxy, was but a fraction of what the ship was capable of in outer space. Glancing about the pilot room, I endeavored for a time to penetrate the purpose of some of the things about me, as we flashed on. Above our window, as in our own cruiser, was a great space-chart, functioning similar to ours, I had no doubt, and showing the dot that was our ship flashing on between the sun-circles that lay about us. There was a device for flashing vari-colored signals, also, such as space-ships inside the galaxy use to show their identity on landing. There was, too, a cabinet containing a great mass of rolls of thin, flexible metal, inscribed with strange, precise little characters that I guessed formed the written language of the serpent-people, though they were beyond all comprehension to me. I turned back to the windows about me, gazing forth into the vista of thronging suns and worlds that lay all about us now as we flashed on into the galaxy toward Canopus.

From all the suns about us, our space-chart showed, great masses of interstellar ships were also flashing inward into the galaxy, the first exodus of the galaxy's people from the outer suns and worlds, driven inward by the fear of these mighty invaders from the outer void who had already destroyed the galaxy's fleet, and were preparing now to grasp all our universe. Far behind us I could see the great ball of suns that was the Cancer cluster, glowing in supreme splendor at the galaxy's edge, and I knew that even now, on the worlds of those thronging suns, the great fleet of the invading serpent-creatures would be settling, would be moving to and fro, wiping out the races that thronged those worlds, wrecking and annihilating the civilizations upon them and making of all the suns and worlds of the great cluster a base for their future attacks upon and conquest of the galaxy. Could we, in any way, save ourselves from that conquest? It seemed hopeless, and now, weary as we were with crushing fatigue from the swift succession of events that had crowded upon us in the last few hours, since our discovery of the invading swarm's approach, it was with a dull despair that I watched Canopus largening ahead as we flashed on toward it.

On between the galaxy's thronging suns we raced, our vast speed carrying us through them and through the swarming, panic-driven ships about them before they could glimpse us. Onward, inward, we flashed, veering here and there to avoid some star's far-swinging planets, dipping or rising to keep clear of the masses of traffic that were jamming the space-lanes leading inward, racing on at the same unvarying, tremendous velocity while we three in the pilot room, and the remainder of our crew beneath, strove to remain awake and conscious against the utterly crushing oppression of fatigue that pressed down upon us. At last we were flashing past the last of the suns between us and Canopus, and the great white central sun lay full before us, a gigantic globe of blazing, brilliant light. As we leapt toward it I saw Korus Kan gradually decreasing our speed, our ship slackening in its tremendous flight as we slanted down toward the planets of the great sun, and toward the inmost planet that was the center of the galaxy's government.

Down, down-our speed was dropping by hundreds of light-speeds each moment, now, as we sped down through the terrific glare of the vast white sun toward its inmost world. As we shot downward I saw that Jhul Din, now, was lying on the floor beside me, overcome by the fatigue that crowded down upon me also; only Korus Kan, of all of us, holding to the controls untiring and unaffected, the metal body in which his living organs and intelligence were cased being untrammeled by any weariness. Beneath us now lay the great masses of traffic, countless swarms of swirling ships, that had fled in to Canopus from the outer suns at the invaders' attack, and as they glimpsed our great oval craft these swarms broke wildly from before us. They took us for a raiding enemy ship, we knew, but down between them unheedingly we flashed, heading low across the surface of the great planet, still at tremendous speed.

Moments more and there loomed far ahead and beneath the colossal tower of the Council of Suns, toward which we were heading. By then I felt all consciousness and volition beginning to leave me, as an utter drowsy weariness overcame me, and I realized but dimly that Korus Kan was slanting the ship down toward the great tower, until abruptly there came from him a sharp cry. With an effort I raised my gaze and saw that from below, as we sped downward, three long, shining shapes were arrowing up to meet us. They were cruisers of our own Interstellar Patrol, and as they flashed upward there suddenly leapt from them a half-dozen brilliant shafts of the crimson rays of death, stabbing straight toward us.

5: For the Federated Suns!

Half conscious as I was, it seemed to me in that dread instant that the whole scene about us was but a strange, set tableau, racing ships and flashing rays frozen motionless in mid-air. Then another cry from Korus Kan jarred me back to realization.

"The signal!" he cried. "Flash the signal of the Interstellar Patrol before they annihilate us!"

At his cry a flash of realization crossed my darkened brain, and I understood that the Patrol cruisers beneath had recognized our craft as an enemy ship, that Korus Kan himself dared not leave the controls even for an instant to flash from the signal our identity. With a last summons of my waning strength I rose, staggered blindly across the room toward the switch, and then, as from beneath the crimson rays flashed blindingly toward us, grasped the switch and swept it around the dial, flashing from our ship's nose the succession of colored lights that proclaimed us of the Patrol. I felt myself sinking to the floor, then, seemed to see the three uprushing ships swerving by us at the last moment as they glimpsed the signal, and then as Korus Kan sent the ship slanting down and over the ground to land I felt a bumping shock, seemed to sink still deeper into the drowsy darkness, then knew no more.

How long it was that I had lain in that darkness, in a stupor of sleep from the weariness of our hours of rushing action, I could not guess when next I opened my eyes. I was lying upon a thick mat on a low metal couch, in a small room lit by a flood of white sunlight that poured through a tall opening in its side. On a similar couch beside me lay Jhul Din, just waking like myself; and for a moment we stared about in bewilderment. Then the sunlight, the brilliant pure white glare of light that could never be mistaken for the light of any star but Canopus, gave me my clue, and I remembered all-our discovery of the approaching swarm while patrolling the galaxy's outer edge, our flight inward and the great battle, our capture of the enemy ship and our escape. I jumped to my feet, and as I did so Korus Kan came into the room.

"You're awake!" he exclaimed, as his eyes fell on Jhul Din and me, standing. "I thought you would be, by now; the Council of Suns is waiting for us."

"The Council," I repeated, and he nodded quickly as we strode with him to the door.

"Yes. We've been here for many hours, Dur Nal-you and Jhul Din sleeping-and in those hours the Council has been in almost constant session, deliberating this invasion of our universe."

* * *

While he spoke we had been traversing a narrow, gleaming-walled corridor, and now turned at right-angles into another, strode down it and through a mighty, arched doorway, and were in the tremendous amphitheater of the Council Hall, a room familiar to all in the galaxy, the vast circle of its floor covered now by the thousands of seated members. It was toward the central platform that we strode, where Serk Haj, the present Council Chief, a great, black-winged bat-figure from Deneb, stood before the vast assembly, behind him on the platform the score of seated figures who were the heads of the different departments of the galaxy's government. It was toward seats among these that he motioned us, as we reached the platform, and as we took our place in them I glanced about the great hall, interested in spite of the cosmic gravity of the moment. It was with something of a leap in my heart that I saw, among all those dissimilar thousands of strange shapes from the galaxy's farthest stars, the single human figure of the representative of my own little solar system. Then, as Serk Haj went on with the address to the assembly which our entrance had interrupted, I turned my attention to his words.

"And so," he was saying, "it is clear to you how these strange invaders from outer space, these serpent-creatures from outside our universe, have been able to annihilate all but a few ships of our great fleet, to settle upon the worlds of the great Cancer cluster as a base, to set up clear around the edge of our galaxy the watchful patrol of their ships that our scouts report. All this they have done with a fleet of a few thousand ships, have shattered our galaxy's defenses and sent wild panic flaming across that galaxy; yet these few thousand ships, as we have now learned, are but the vanguard of the countless thousands that are soon to follow, to pour down upon us in colossal, irresistible hordes.

"It was through the feat of Dur Nal, here, and his companions, that we have learned this. You have heard how, after the great battle, he and his party were able to do what never before was done in all the annals of interstellar warfare, to board and capture an enemy ship in mid-space and bring it back, intact, to Canopus. That ship has been thoroughly examined by the best of the galaxy's scientists, and in its pilot room was found a collection of metallic sheets or rolls covered with strange characters, the written records of these serpent-invaders. Upon those records for hours our greatest lexicologists have worked, and finally they have been able to decipher them, and have found in them the facts of the history and purposes of these strange invaders from outer space.

"These invaders, as the records show, are inhabitants of one of the distant universes of stars like our own, lying millions of light-years from our own in the depths of infinite outer space. So far are these mighty galaxies like our own that they appear to us but faint patches of light in the blackness of space, yet we recognize them as universes like ours, and have given them names of our own, calling one the Andromeda universe, and another the Triangulum universe, and so on. The universe of these serpent-creatures, though, although one of the nearest to our own, has never been seen or suspected by us because it is invisible from our distance, being not a living universe of flaming stars like our own and the ones we see, but a darkened, dying universe.

"It is a universe in which the thronging stars have followed nature's inexorable laws and have darkened and died, one by one, a great universe passing into death and darkness and decay as our own and all others, some time in the far future, will pass. For eons upon it had dwelt the great masses of the serpent-people, thronging its countless worlds, and as their suns began to fail them, one by one, as their universe swept toward its final darkness and death, they saw that it was necessary for them to migrate to another universe unless they wished to pass also into death. So they constructed great space-ships which were able to travel at millions of light-speeds, by causing an ether-shift about the ship; space-ships in which it would be possible to do what never had another done, to cross the vast gulf between universes. Five thousand of these, when finished, they sent out with serpent-crews and death-beam armament as an advance party which was to locate a universe satisfactory for their races and then attack it, gaining a foothold upon it while the rest of the countless serpent-hordes would build a still mightier fleet of tens of thousands of ships, which would transport all their great hordes to the universe they meant to conquer.

"So the five thousand ships drove out from the dying universe into the void, toward the Andromeda universe, the nearest to their own. Down they poured upon it in swift attack, but up to meet them rose the people of the Andromeda universe, a single race ruling all of it, whose science and power were so great that with mighty weapons they drove back and defeated the five thousand attacking ships, forcing them back into outer space again. It was clear that for the present the Andromeda universe could not be conquered, so they turned at a right angle, and after flashing a message by some means of etheric communication to the masses of their peoples in the dying universe, struck out through the infinite void in a new direction, toward our own universe.

"Across the void they came, toward our universe, and rushed in upon it after the long days of their tremendous flight through space, met and annihilated our own great fleet at the galaxy's edge, and have settled upon the Cancer cluster, gaining the foothold they desired. Soon from their dying universe will come their vast main fleet with all their hordes, and with a mighty weapon which the records mention as now being constructed in the dying universe, a weapon to annihilate all life on our worlds with terrific swiftness. They will come, in all their masses, and when they have annihilated the races of the Federated Suns and hold all our galaxy in their grasp will then sail back with renewed power to pour down upon the Andromeda universe and conquer it also. A cosmic plague of conquest and destruction, creeping through the infinite void from universe to universe."

Serk Haj was silent a moment, and all in the great room were silent, a silence such as surely none ever experienced before. I was listening tensely, Jhul Din and Korus Kan beside me, but no whisper broke that stillness until the Council Chiefs voice went calmly on.

"Doom creeps upon us," he said, "yet there is still one chance to stay that doom. We know that before attacking us the serpent-creatures attacked the Andromeda universe and were repulsed, that they plan to return to that attack after they have conquered us. So if we could send a messenger across the terrific void to the Andromeda universe, to tell its peoples of the serpent-creatures' attack upon us and their intention to invade the Andromeda universe once more, after conquering us, there is a chance that those peoples would come to our aid, with the powerful weapons with which they have already once repulsed the serpent-creatures, and would help us to crush these invaders before all their resistless hordes can pour down on our galaxy. It is a chance-a chance only-but on that chance rests the fate of our universe.

"This chance, a chance to seek the help that may save us, has been given to us by Dur Nal and his companions, in their capture of the enemy ship in mid-space; for this captured ship, with its colossal speed, can do what none of ours can do: it can cross the mighty void that lies between us and the Andromeda universe, and carry an appeal for help to that universe. The captured ship has been thoroughly studied by our scientists, for we plan to build a great fleet of others with mechanisms like it, to help in crushing these invaders whom we can not crush alone. A special crew of picked engineers and fighters, from various of our stars, has been selected for it, and now waits in it for the start of this great flight through the void that they are to make for our galaxy. The command of it, though, can go only to the one who captured it, to Dur Nal, who was first to warn us of the oncoming peril, and to his lieutenants, Jhul Din and Korus Kan."

With the words we three snapped to our feet, the great assembly rising likewise in their excitement, and now Serk Haj turned to face us.

"Dur Nal," he said, steadily, "it is not for me to exhort you and your friends to do now your best, who have done always your best. If you can break through the enemy's patrol around the galaxy's edge, can cross the mighty void which never yet has any of our galaxy crossed, and can carry to the Andromeda universe our appeal for help, it may be that you will save us all-it may be that you will save the races and civilizations of all the Federated Suns from conquest and annihilation and death. To you three, who have spent your lives in the service of the Federated Suns, I need say no other word."

We saluted, and there was a moment of deathlike silence, until I spoke. "We start at once," I said, simply.

* * *

The next moment we three were striding down the broad aisle across the mighty hall, between the thousands of members who, still in the grip of that strange silence, watched us go, the one chance of our universe with us. Out of the great hall we strode, and down the big corridor, out of the great tower into the white glare of Canopus' light, and toward the long, gleaming oval shape of our waiting ship. Inside it our crew awaited us, a full eight score of strange, dissimilar shapes from every quarter of the galaxy, among them the two score who had been of my cruiser's crew and had helped capture this ship. Swiftly I gave to them our first orders, heard the space-doors clanging as we ascended to the pilot room, and then as Korus Kan stepped to the controls heard the mingled throbbing and beating of the great generators beneath.

I gave a brief signal, and Korus Kan gently opened the mighty ship's controls, its nose lifting now as it shot smoothly upward. Past us now from beneath there rushed up two cruisers of the Patrol, speeding up ahead of us and flashing signals that cleared swiftly from before us the masses of swarming traffic above, that swept hastily to either side as our long, grim ship drove up and outward. Up, up-and then we were clear of the last of them, our escorting Patrol cruisers dropping behind us now and turning back as with rapidly mounting speed we shot out from the great planet and upward, mighty Canopus blazing full behind us now, as we flashed out again from it, out with our velocity increasing by leaps and bounds, out toward the Cancer cluster once more, toward the galaxy's edge.

With the passing minutes our generators were throbbing faster and faster, and we were leaping on through the galaxy at a speed that equaled or exceeded that of our flight inward. Suns were flashing by us on either side now, at a rate that was an index to our appalling speed, but still we flashed on with greater and greater speed, racing out between the thronging suns of the galaxy toward its edge, the great ball of suns of the Cancer cluster expanding before us as we raced on in its direction. On-on-until the mighty cluster lay full to our right, until we were flashing past it, the blackness of outer space stretching ahead, and in that far-flung blackness the dim little patch of light that was the Andromeda universe. We were passing the mighty cluster, now, heading straight out into the black abyss, and my heart hammered with excitement as we flashed on. Could we pass the patrol of enemy ships around the galaxy's edge without a challenge, even? Could we-but suddenly there was a low exclamation from Korus Kan, and I turned to see, racing up beside us at our left, a close-massed squadron of five great oval ships.

They had glimpsed us on their space-charts, we knew, and now were flashing beside us through space at a speed the same as our own, drawing nearer toward us while from their white-lit pilot rooms their serpent-pilots inspected us. A moment I held my breath, as they flashed on at our side, peering toward us; then, apparently satisfied that our great oval craft was but one of their own fleet, they began to drop behind, to turn and resume their patrol. I breathed a great sigh, but the next moment caught my breath again, for the foremost of the five ships, as it dropped behind, had paused at our side, had veered a little closer as though still unsatisfied. Closer it came, and closer, until the serpent-creatures in its pilot room were clear to our eyes, as it and the ships behind it raced on with ourselves through space. Then suddenly from that foremost ship a signal of brilliant light flashed to those behind it, and at once all five drove straight toward us.

"They've seen us!" shouted Jhul Din. "They know we're not of their own fleet!"

But as he shouted I had leapt to the order-tube, had cried into it a swift command, and then as the five ships veered in toward us there leapt from our vessel's sides long, swift shafts of crimson light, the deadly red rays with which our captured ship had been equipped at Canopus, narrow brilliant shafts that touched the two foremost of those five racing ships and annihilated them even as they sprang toward us. The other three were leaping on, though, their death-beams reaching like great fingers of ghostly light through the void toward us, and I knew that we could not hope to escape them by flight, since they were as swift as our own craft; so in a moment I made decision, and shouted to Korus Kan to head our ship about.

Around we swept, in one great lightning curve, and then were rushing straight back upon the three racing ships. Into and between them we flashed, death-beams and red rays stabbing thick through the void in the instant that we passed them. I saw one of the great pale beams slice down through the rear end of our ship, heard shouts from beneath as those of our crew in that end were wiped out of existence, and then we were past, were turning swiftly in space and flashing back outward again, and saw that two of the three ships before us were visible only as great crimson flares, the other ship hanging motionless for the moment as though stunned by the destruction of its fellows.

"Four gone!" yelled Jhul Din, as we flashed toward the last of the five ships.

That last ship, though, paused only a moment as we raced toward it, and then suddenly flashed away into the void to the right, vanishing instantly from sight as it raced in flight toward the Cancer cluster. We had destroyed and routed the squadron that had challenged us, had broken through the enemy's great patrol. Korus Kan was opening our power-controls to the utmost, and now the throbbing and beating of the great generators beneath was waxing into a tremendous, thrumming drone, as we shot outward into space, the Cancer cluster falling behind us as we flashed out at a tremendous and still steadily mounting speed.

Out-out-into the vast black vault of sheer outer space that lay stretched before and about us now, the awful velocity of our great craft increasing by tens of thousands, by hundreds of thousands of light-speeds, as we shot out into the untrammeled void. Behind us the mighty, disk-like mass of flaming stars that was our universe was contracting in size each moment, dwindling and diminishing, but before us there glowed out in the vast blackness misty little patches of light, universes of suns inconceivably remote from our own. Strongest among them glowed a single light-patch, full before us, and it was on it that our eyes were fixed as our ship at utmost speed plunged on. It was the Andromeda universe, and we were flashing out into the mighty void of outer space toward it at a full ten million light-speeds, to seek the help which alone could save our universe from doom.

6: Into the Infinite

Standing at the controls, his tireless metal figure erect as he gazed out into the vast blackness of cosmic space that lay before us, Korus Kan turned from that gaze toward me as I stepped inside the pilot room. Silently I stepped over beside him, and silently, as was our wont, we contemplated the great panorama before us. A stupendous vault of sheer utter darkness it stretched about us, darkness broken only by the misty light of the great universes of thronging suns that floated here and there in this vast void through which we were racing. Behind us our own galaxy lay, just another of those dim glows; for hours had passed since we had launched out into outer space from its edge, and in those hours our awful speed had carried us on through the void through thousands of light-years of space.

But though in those hours of flight our own universe had dwindled to a mere mist of light, those other misty patches that were the universes ahead had hardly grown at all in size or intensity of light, making us realize that even the vast expanse of space through which our ship had already flashed was but a fraction of the gulf that lay between us and the great Andromeda universe. Before us the soft glow that was that universe seemed a little brighter, a little larger, but even so I knew that more than a score of days must elapse before even our ship's tremendous velocity would bring us to it. And even were we able to secure the help we needed, it would still be many days before we could flash back to our own galaxy, and in those days, I well knew, the serpent-invaders would be completing their last plans, tightening their grip on all the suns and worlds of the Cancer cluster, and preparing the way for the vast hordes that soon would cross the void to pour down on that cluster, spreading resistlessly from it across all our galaxy.

It was with heavy heart that I gazed ahead, knowing these things, but my gloomy thoughts were suddenly interrupted by an exclamation from Korus Kan, who had been peering intently forward into the tenebrous void, and who now pointed ahead, toward the right.

"That flicker of light," he said: "you see it?"

I bent forward, gazing to where he was pointing in the heavens before us, and then at last made out in the blackness, not far to the right of the glowing Andromeda universe, another patch of light of equal size, but one whose light was so dim as only to be seen with straining eyes. A mere dim flicker of light it was, in that crowding darkness, but as I gazed at it the nature of it suddenly came clearly to my mind, and I uttered a low exclamation myself.

"The universe of the serpent-creatures." I said. "It's the dying universe from which they came to invade our own."

He nodded. "Yes. It's nearer the Andromeda universe than our own, too."

I saw that he was right, and that the two universes, that of Andromeda and this dim, dying one, lay comparatively close to each other, and at almost equal distances from our own, the two forming the base of a long, narrow triangle of which our own universe was the apex. Together we gazed toward that dim flicker of light, in a thoughtful silence. We knew, even as we gazed, what great preparations were going on in that dying universe for the conquest of our own galaxy, what mighty efforts the serpent-races there were making, to complete their vast fleet and the strange, huge weapon which the records we had captured had mentioned, so that they could flash through the void to pour down on our galaxy. The knowledge held us wrapped in thought as our great ship raced on, still holding to its tremendous utmost velocity, rocking and swaying a little as it plunged through the vast ether-currents which swirled about us here in outer space.

Gradually, as we two stood in silence with our great craft speeding on, I became aware that during the last few minutes the air inside the pilot room had become perceptibly warmer, and that its warmth was still increasing. I glanced at the dial that registered the output of our heat-generators, but it was steady at its accustomed position; yet with each moment the warmth was increasing, until within a few minutes more the heat about us had become decidedly uncomfortable. Korus Kan, too, had noticed it, and had now swung backward the control of the heat-generators; yet still the warmth increased, the heated air in the pilot room rapidly becoming unbearable. I turned to the Antarian, fully alarmed now, but as I did so the door snapped open and Jhul Din burst up into the pilot room.

"What's happening to the ship?" he cried. "Its inner walls are getting almost too hot to touch."

In stunned surprise we gazed at each other, our heating-mechanisms turned completely off now, yet the inside-temperature dial's arrow was still moving steadily forward! The thing was beyond all reason, we knew, and for an instant we stood in amazement, the heat increasing still about us. Then suddenly Jhul Din pointed upward toward the massed dials above the controls, his arm quivering.

"Look!" he cried. "The outside-temperature dial." Swiftly we raised our own eyes toward it, the dial upon which was shown the temperature outside the ship. It should have shown absolute zero, we knew, as always in the infinite cold of empty space. But now it did not, and our eyes widened as we stared at it, in utter astonishment and fear. For it registered a temperature of thousands of degrees in the empty void about us.

"Heat!" I cried. "Heat in empty outer space. It's unthinkable."

Unthinkable it was; yet, even as we stood and stared, the arrow on the outside-temperature was still creeping steadily forward, showing a swiftly increasing heat outside, while the air inside had become all but unbreathable, parching to the lungs. At the same moment a faint light began to appear about us, a dim red glow that was intensifying with each moment that we raced onward, and as we wheeled toward the windows we saw, in the blackness of space before us, a great, faintly glowing region of red light ahead, stretching across the heaven before us. Ever stronger that crimson glow was growing as we raced on, the heat about us mounting with it, and from beneath came the cries of fear of our crew as they too glimpsed the awful region of heat and light through which we now were racing.

I knew that not much longer could the heat about us increase thus if our ship and ourselves were to survive, yet steadily the arrows on the temperature-dials were moving forward, and as more and more of the awful heat outside penetrated through the insulation of our heat-resistant walls I felt my brain turning dizzily, saw big Jhul Din stagger and sway against the wall, and saw Korus Kan, the heat penetrating through his metal body even more than through our own, slumping sidewise across the controls as he was overcome by it, only half conscious. I sprang to his side, despite my own dizziness and parching throat and lungs, grasped the controls and held our ship straight onward, since all about us the vast glow of crimson light and heat stretched, encircling us and beating upon us as we flashed onward. No flame there was, nor incandescent gas, nor solid burning matter of any kind, nothing but a titanic region of brilliant crimson light, without visible source of any kind, glowing with terrific heat there in the emptiness of outer space.

* * *

The glow about us was becoming more brilliant with each moment that we raced on, and as the heat outside and inside increased still more I saw Jhul Din fling open the pilot room's door in a vain search for cooler air; heard from beneath a rumbling, ominous thumping and cracking, as our heat-seared walls began to warp in the terrible temperature to which they were being subjected. Far ahead in the awful region of heat and light through which we were speeding I glimpsed now a deeper spot of crimson light in the great red glow, and as we raced on toward it I saw that it was the center of all the great outpouring of red light and of heat, since it was all but blinding in its brilliance, while our dials showed a temperature mounting each moment that we neared it.

"It's the center of the whole thing!" cried Jhul Din, staggering toward me and then slumping down to the floor, overcome. "Keep the ship clear of it!" he shouted, collapsing as he did so, while beside me I saw Korus Kan, completely unconscious, neither the great crustacean Spican nor the metal-bodied Antarian possessing my own resistance to the heat that now was smothering us, though I too knew that not much longer could I hold to the controls.

Hold to them I did, though, but half conscious now myself; then as there flamed dead ahead the heart of the whole great inferno, a blazing area of brilliant crimson light that dazzled me, its terrific heat pouring full down upon our plunging ship, I swung the controls sidewise, swerving our craft to the left and around the great heat-region's fiery heart. Along its side we flashed, our ship plunging and reeling now as it shot through ether-currents that must have been of unparalleled size and speed, but even in that darkness that was stealing over my senses I could see that in that hell of light and heat to our right there was still no core of matter, nothing but light and heat and space. Full beside us it flamed as we shot past it, our rocking ship's sides still grating and cracking terribly beneath the heat that beat upon them, racing past that awful glare of crimson light and heat that was like a colossal forge at which some mighty workman beat out flaming suns, blazing in terrific intensity and dimensions there in the void between universes.

On we raced, while I strove with all my waning strength to hold the ship, bucking and swaying as it was, clear of the fiery inferno to our right, and then it was dropping behind, the brilliant crimson light and terrible heat about us lessening a little as we shot by it. Moments more and it had dwindled to a deeper spot of light in the great red-glowing region to our rear, and then as we flashed still onward at our utmost speed the last of the light and heat about us were passing; so that a moment later, with heat-mechanisms again switched on, we were flashing again through the cold black void as before. With the passing of the overpowering heat the cracking of the ship's sides had ceased, and Korus Kan and Jhul Din were staggering to their feet, consciousness returning with the cooler air. Together we stared back, to where only a swiftly vanishing little glow of faint red light in the darkness behind gave evidence of the hell of heat and light through which we had just come.

"Heat and light in the void of outer space!" I cried. "The thing's impossible-and yet we came through it."

Korus Kan had been gazing back with us, but now he turned at my exclamation, shook his head. "Not impossible," he said quickly. "That heat and that light we came through were not generated like the usual heat and light of burning suns-they were generated in empty space by the ether itself!" And as we stared blankly at him he quickly explained himself. "You know that heat and light are but vibrations of the ether of various frequencies, just as are radio-active or chemical rays, and the electro-magnetic waves we use for speech and signaling. Highest of all in frequency are those electro-magnetic waves; next in order of frequency come heat waves; next the red light vibrations, and down the various colors of light to the lower-frequency violet light vibrations; and below these, lowest of all, the radio-active or chemical rays. Well, our scientists have long known that various of these ether-vibrations have been set up in the ether of outside space by the collision of great ether-currents. By those collisions are formed sometimes electro-magnetic vibrations, interfering with our speech-vibrations as static, or sometimes light-vibrations, glowing without visible source in the heavens and known to us as the zodiacal light. Here in the void, though, where mighty currents of size and speed inconceivable must collide, the vibrations set up were in the frequency-range of heat and of the lower adjoining frequency, that of red light; so that that region we came through is one where the immense ether-currents that we plunged through collide and set up a ceaseless outpouring of heat and light waves there in the ether, in empty space itself."

I shook my head. "It seems plausible," I said, "yet the reality of it-that titanic region of awful heat and light-"

"It seems strange enough." he admitted, "but it's really no stranger than if it had been a great region of static, or-"

A sharp cry from the Spican stabbed through our talk. "The walls!" he shouted. "They're beginning to glow-look-"

Startled, we swung about, and then the blood drove from my heart at the strangeness and awfulness of what we saw; for, engrossed in our talk, we had not noticed that all in the pilot room about us, walls and floor and mechanism and controls, was beginning to shine out with a strange, flickering luminosity, a misty, fluorescent light that with each moment was waxing in intensity, a quivering, unfamiliar light that seemed to glow from all in our ship, as it raced swaying on, though outside was nothing but the same blackness of space as before! Even as we stared about us, astounded, our own bodies, and especially the metal body of Korus Kan, had begun to radiate the same lambent light, and then, with a sudden great leap of my heart, I saw that the edges and corners of the walls about us were smoothing and rounding a little, crumbling and disappearing a little as though slowly disintegrating. At the same moment a strange tingling shook through every atom of my body, a quivering force that flooded through me with increasing intensity.

Horror-stricken we stood, until from one of the levers beside me an inch of the handle fell off, a little piece of metal that rattled to the floor and that was crumbling slowly, disintegrating, even as did the lever from which it had crumbled off. Then Korus Kan was leaping toward me, across the glowing pilot room.

"Swerve the ship's course!" he cried, wildly. "We've run into another great region of vibrations-radio-active vibrations that will crumble the ship and all in it to pieces in a few more moments!"

I grasped the shining levers, swung them sharply sidewise, sent our craft flashing off at a broad angle to its previous course, but still about us the glowing light waxed and deepened, and I felt an infinite nausea overcoming me as through my body surged the floods of radio-active vibrations from the ether about us that had caused all matter in our ship to radiate that misty light. With each moment the shining walls about us seemed crumbling faster, and I knew that moments more would see the ship's end unless soon we escaped from the great trap of disintegrating death into which we had ventured. I felt, too, that not for long could we ourselves stand the impact of these disintegrating vibrations, felt the tingling that shook my own glowing flesh increasing in intensity, while all about us, now, tiny bits of metal were falling from crumbling walls and ceiling and machinery.

Still grasping the controls, though, I held the ship to a course aslant from our previous one, while my two companions tensed with me over them, gazing ahead, while from beneath again came wild cries of alarm as those of our crew, who had already run the gantlet of the enemies' death-beams and of the great heat-region, saw the new peril that encompassed us. There came, too, from somewhere in the ship, a great thump and clang of metal as some one of our mechanisms there broke loose from its crumbling base, but still we flung onward through the void, rocking and twisting, and in a moment the terrible tenseness that gripped us lessened a little as we saw that the glowing of the walls about us, and of our own bodies, was beginning to wane, as we drew out of the zone of deadly force. A few more moments of onward flight and they had vanished altogether, and then I brought the ship back to its course, heading once more toward the misty light-patch of the Andromeda universe, while I drew a long breath of relief.

* * *

There was a silence of moments before Jhul Din, first of us, found his voice. "Heat regions and radio-active force regions!" he exclaimed. "If more of them lie between us and the Andromeda universe, what's our chance of getting there?"

Korus Kan shook his head. "We'll get there," he said, "but we'll have to keep close watch every moment of our flight-there's no way of telling how thickly scattered these great vibration-regions may lie in space about us."

A moment more and Jhul Din left us, passing down into the ship's body to ascertain what damage had been wrought by the great zone of radio-active force, though we knew that we had escaped from it before it could seriously damage the ship. And as I now relinquished the controls to Korus Kan, pausing with him a moment to look out again with some fearfulness into the black void through which we were racing, it was with a full realization, at last, of the tremendous perils and unguessed circumstances that might lie in the vast spaces through which we must yet flash. Yet as my eyes fell again on the misty-glowing circle of the Andromeda universe, and the sinister, dimly flickering mass of the dying universe of the serpent-people, to its right, I felt my determination steeling again within me.

It was the sight of those two far patches of light ahead, I think, that held us all to our purpose in the hours, the days, that followed. Long, strange days they were, when with no sun whatever near us we could measure time only by the great abysses of space through which our ship was steadily flashing, computing from those distances and from our unvarying velocity the passing of the hours. But with each day, with each hour, we were racing countless billions of miles nearer toward the Andromeda universe, and toward the goal of our tremendous journey. On and on we plunged, our prow turned ever toward that misty circle of light ahead, that was largening and brightening with each hour that we sped toward it.

Thrice, in those following days, we glimpsed great regions of heat and crimson light like that through which we first had plunged, and each time we were able to swerve away from them and detour around them in time, and so escaped a renewal of our first dread experience of them. More than once, too, our instruments gave us warning of zones of radio-active or electrical force near us, and these we gave even a wider berth than the heat-regions, for these we feared most of all, I think. Ether-currents and vast ether-maelstroms were about us, too, we knew, but the tremendous speed of our craft brought us flashing through those where a slower-moving ship would have perished.

As it was, one danger that had menaced us always in navigation inside the galaxy, the presence of meteors and meteor-swarms, was lacking in our flight. Yet I think that almost we would have welcomed their presence about us, for all their danger, if only for the knowledge that some other matter besides our ship moved and existed in the mighty void around us. It was our ship's isolation, the knowledge that all about it for countless billions upon billions of miles, thousands upon tens of thousands of light-years, there stretched only the awful regions of empty space, an ocean of lightless space in which the galaxies of flaring suns here and there were but tiny islands, that oppressed us most. Far behind lay our own galaxy, and far ahead the Andromeda universe; and between universe and universe, an infinitesimally tiny speck there in the mighty void, our ship raced on and on.

But as we added day after measured day to our flight, as we flashed nearer and nearer toward the Andromeda universe, it slowly began to change before us, to wax from a little patch of glowing light to a larger and brighter patch, and then to a great oval of light that flamed brilliant in the blackness of space before us, and finally to a vast disk-shaped mass of stars like our own universe. The disk mass lay in space with edge toward us, and seen thus, the light of its countless thronging stars was fused almost into a single waxing glow, but as we swept nearer and nearer that glow began to resolve itself into the light of the myriad massed suns of which it was composed. So brightly flamed those gathering suns in the heavens before us that only with an effort could we make out, far toward the right, the still faint glow of the dying universe of the serpent-people, as near to us almost as that of Andromeda, yet infinitely dim and dead in comparison with it.

* * *

Steadily we flashed on, day following day, until when a score of them had passed we computed ourselves as having traversed two-thirds of our journey, and could see that ever more swiftly the great universe of stars ahead was widening across the heavens. On that twentieth day I spent hours with Jhul Din in our regular inspection of the ship's mechanism, passing with him through the long room where our engineers, depleted in number by the death-beam that had sliced through our ship, tended carefully the mighty generators. Then the Spican and I passed out of the room, and were proceeding down the long corridor that led toward the pilot room when there came suddenly from it, ahead of us, a sharp cry.

We stopped short a moment, then raced down the corridor and burst up into the pilot room, where Korus Kan turned swiftly from the controls toward us.

"Ships are approaching from ahead." he cried, pointing up toward the big space-chart.

We looked, and saw that even as he had said there moved upon that chart a half-hundred black dots, in close formation, creeping steadily downward across the blank chart to meet the upward-creeping dot that was our ship. In silent amazement we watched, as our craft raced on, and then saw that as we neared them the fifty ships ahead were slowly halting, and then beginning to move back toward the Andromeda universe in the same direction as ourselves. They were allowing us to slowly overtake them, obviously intending to race beside us at the same speed as ourselves, toward the Andromeda universe. And as they made that move Jhul Din uttered an exclamation.

"They must be ships from the Andromeda universe itself." he cried. "They've learned of our approach by space-charts of some kind-have come out to meet us."

My heart leapt at the thought, for if it were so it would mean the first success of our mission across the void. Silently we watched, as our ship's single dot on the chart raced closer and closer toward the half-hundred dots above it, they moving now at a speed almost equal to our own. Within moments we would be able to glimpse them, we knew, and gazed tensely into the blackness of space ahead, toward the Andromeda universe's flaring suns, as our craft raced on. Moments were passing, tense moments of silence and watchfulness, and then far ahead we glimpsed in the void, hardly to be seen against the great glow of the Andromeda universe, a little mass of light-points that steadily were largening as we gradually overtook them.

A full fifty of them in sight, they were flashing on in a close formation, allowing us to overhaul them, changing from mere light-points into dark, vaguely glimpsed shapes as we drove nearer toward them. Then at last we had reached them, were driving in among them as they moved now at the same speed as ourselves, could see their shapes more clearly as long and oval, their front ends white-lit transparent-walled rooms like our own. Nearer we were flashing to those before us and about us, and then in those white-lit control rooms I glimpsed their occupants, slender, writhing pale shapes at sight of which I cried aloud.

"Serpent-ships!" I cried. "Serpent-ships from the dying universe ahead! Those back in our galaxy from whom we escaped have warned them of our coming, by the means of etheric communication their records mentioned-they know our mission and they've come out to intercept us here in space."

Even as I cried out, Korus Kan's hands flashed out to the controls, but he was an instant too late. For at that same moment the ships just before us had turned and circled in one swift movement, and were rushing straight back toward us. I had a flashing glimpse of their white-lit prows racing toward us through the intense darkness, and saw with photographic clearness the slender serpent-shapes in those brilliantly lit pilot rooms, and then the foremost ship loomed suddenly enormous as it flashed straight toward us. With a sharp cry Korus Kan drove the controls sidewise to swerve our ship, but before we could avoid the onrushing craft ahead it was upon us and with a terrific, thunderous shock had crashed straight into our own racing ship.

7: The Gates of a Universe

I think now that it was only that last jerking aside of the controls by Korus Kan that saved us from utter annihilation in that moment. For as he moved them our ship swerved sidewise, not enough to avoid the collision but enough to cause the onrushing ship to strike our own obliquely along the side instead of head on, and it was that alone that saved us. The crash shook our great craft like a leaf in a gale, trembling and reeling there in the black gulf of space and flinging us all to the pilot room's floor, and for a moment it seemed to us that our ship had been riven apart. Then, as it steadied, we scrambled to our feet, just in time to see the ship that had crashed into us reeling away to the side, a shattered mass of metal, while down upon us from above and all about the other serpent-ships were swooping.

As Korus Kan sprang back to the controls I leapt to the order-tube, was on the point of shouting a command to our crew beneath, when down from the hovering ships above us there dropped around us a dozen or more of great flexible ropes or loops of gleaming metal, that encircled our ship like great snares. Within another instant our craft had been drawn upward by them until it lay securely lashed between two of the enemy ships, our ray-tubes useless now; since to loose them was but to perish with the ships that held us. Then another ship was slanting down above us, and as it hung over us there projected downward from its lower space-door toward our own upper space-door a hollow tube of metal of the same diameter as the two space-doors, that attached itself with a click to our own upper door, forming a hermetically sealed gangway there between our two ships in space.

Until that moment we had stood motionless in amazement, somewhat stunned by the suddenness of our ship's capture; then as the space-door of our ship clanged open above I uttered a cry, sprang out into the corridor that ran the ship's length, and saw the members of our crew bursting into that corridor in answer to my cry, even as from the space-door chamber beside it there writhed out a horde of scores of the serpent-creatures. Jhul Din and Korus Kan were beside me, now, and with shouts of fierce anger we rushed upon the masses of serpent-creatures who still were pouring down from the ship above through the hollow gangway.

The m�l�e that followed was wilder than when we ourselves had captured this same ship; since though we and all our crew flung ourselves forward upon the things without hesitation, we were weaponless and outnumbered by ten to one. As it was, I struck out with all my power at the hideous, writhing beings, feeling some of them collapse beneath my wild blows even as they strove to coil about me; saw Korus Kan, with his triple powerful metal arms, crushing the life from those who leapt upon him, cool and silent as ever even in that wild din of battle; glimpsed the great Spican grasping those about him in his tremendous arms and literally tearing them into fragments as we battled on. But rapidly the members of our crew who battled about us were going down, the life crushed from them by the coiling bodies that overwhelmed us, and then as I strode on I too was gripped from beneath, by a serpent-creature that had wound itself about my feet, and now pulled me down.

Struggling in the grip of a half-dozen of the alien creatures, I heard Jhul Din shouting hoarsely, saw him finally pulled from his feet also by a great mass of writhing things, and then Korus Kan and the remainder of our crew were overcome too, and within another moment all was over. Scores of the serpent-creatures lay dead about us, but with them lay many of our own crew; not more than a bare score were left to us now of all our party. Gripped tightly still by the serpent-creatures, we were thrust down a narrow stair and into an empty little storeroom beneath the pilot room, in its metal walls but a single space-window giving a view forward. The door snapped shut as the last of us were thrust inside, and then our captors had left us, the lashings that had snared our ship were cast loose by the ships on either side, and as the humming of the generators waxed loud again our ship and those about it began to move once more through space.

"They're heading now toward the dying universe," exclaimed Korus Kan, gazing through the single window into the black gulf outside. "They're going to take us there as prisoners."

But I too, gazing through the window at his side, had seen that our ship's prow was turning now toward the right, so that ahead now instead of the great glowing mass of the Andromeda universe there lay the dim, faintly glowing patch of light that was the serpent-peoples' waning universe. To it now our ship and the ships about us were flashing at greater and greater speed, and as they hummed on the despair that had already gripped me deepened. It was not the peril in which we ourselves lay that affected me, for well I knew that from the moment of our capture our fate had been sealed, and that our temporary reprieve from death meant only that some more horrible fate awaited us in the dying universe. It was that the last chance of our own universe had vanished with our capture, the last hope to summon from the Andromeda universe the help that could save our galaxy gone now forever.

In a silence of utter despair I gazed ahead as our ship and those about it hummed on, while Jhul Din and Korus Kan and all the survivors of our crew prisoned with us maintained the same despairing silence. There was no plan for escape, no suggestion of it, even, for well we knew the impossibility of even winning clear of the room that was our prison, not to speak of overcoming the hordes of serpent-creatures who now operated our ship. In a strange apathy of spirit we sat and stood, hour after hour, speaking little. Our eyes and minds turned only to the window through which we could see, in the black abyss of space ahead, the faintly glowing universe of the serpent-people broadening slowly ahead as our ships raced on at full speed toward it.

* * *

A day passed, and that dying universe had grown across a full third of the vault of space before us, a great, dim-glowing region of flickering luminescence utterly different from the radiance of the shining Andromeda universe, that lay now far to our left. On and on the serpent-ships raced, unceasingly, hour upon hour, until at last on the third day of our imprisonment their speed began to slacken, the drone of the great generators falling a little in pitch as they drew near at last to their galaxy, that had expanded outward now until it seemed to fill all the heavens before us, so strange a spectacle to our eyes that almost we forgot our own predicament and despair in contemplation of it.

Full in the heavens before us it lay, a mighty galaxy fully as large as our own, as the Andromeda universe, but infinitely different, a galaxy not of life but of death. In all its mighty mass were no flaming white or blue or yellow suns like those of our own galaxy, no brilliant young stars surrounded by circling, sun-warmed worlds. Here was only a vast forest of dead and dying suns, stretched across the heavens, huge throngs of dark, burned-out stars, cold and black and barren, that crowded thick upon one another, with here and there a few dying suns of dark, smoky red, somber crimson stars in the last stages of stellar evolution. It was with the light of these few alone that the great mass faintly glowed, an expiring universe in which all light and life were sinking into darkness and death.

Silent with awe and wonder we watched as our ships drove in toward this darkening galaxy, and then I began to make out, between us and it, a strange, constant flicker of blue light that seemed to extend all about the faint-glowing universe before us. Stronger that flicker was growing as we sped on toward it, though through it there shone clearly as ever the light of the crimson suns beyond it. At last we seemed racing straight into it, and now I saw that it was a colossal globular shell of flickering blue light, almost invisible, that enclosed within itself all the mighty, circular mass of the dying universe before us. Our ships seemed about to flash straight into it, but now turned sharply to the left, speeding along the great light-barrier's edge. A ship beside us, though, had turned a little too late and had struck the light-wall while turning, and as it did so I saw it rebounding back with terrific force as though in collision with a solid wall, its whole prow crumpled by the impact. Then, at last, I comprehended the nature of this vast shell of flickering blue light that enclosed the dying universe.

"It's a vibration-wall." I cried to my companions. "A great wall of etheric vibrations enclosing all this universe."

For I saw now that that was the great barrier's nature. It was a mighty shell of perpetual vibrations in the ether itself, extending all about the universe before us, allowing light and electro-magnetic communication waves to pass through it, unchanged, but excluding and holding out the vibrations of matter, by meeting them, as I knew must be the case, with a vibration of equal frequency which opposed them, reflected them back, forming a barrier more impenetrable than any of solid matter, yet one all but invisible, extending about all this mighty universe, excluding from it for all time all matter from outside. Too, as I was later to learn, the great vibration-wall was impenetrable to the heat-vibrations, reflecting those of its dying suns that struck it back into the universe inside. It was for this purpose that the vast barrier had been erected, as the suns of the serpent-people failed, to prevent the escape of any of the precious heat-radiations of their few living suns, and also to place about all their universe a wall impenetrable to all invaders. Set in the ether about their universe eons before, the vibrations that made up the great barrier were perpetual and undying, a vast wall of defense about the serpent-universe.

We were flashing close along the mighty, flickering barrier's edge, now, and the speed of our ships slackened swiftly as there loomed far ahead in space two great, dark bulks starred here and there with points of white light. Moments more and they had grown to immense size as we neared them, and now we saw that these were mighty, square-walled structures of gleaming metal, each a full five thousand feet in length along each of its four sides, and half again that much in height: two colossal metal forts that floated motionless there in space, set directly in the great wall of flickering blue vibrations, and between which there was a great opening in that wall, a clear space in which I divined was the single opening in all the great wall. And flanking that opening on either side hung the massive metal structures, upheld there in the void, as I guessed, by mighty generators like those of our own ships, castles of metal whose countless deadly death-beam tubes commanded the opening between them and from whose white-lit windows the serpent-garrisons of them gazed out upon us, great space-forts hung there at the vibration-wall's one opening, guarding the gates of a universe.

In toward the narrow opening between the great forts swept our ships, and as they moved slowly inward there flashed a challenging signal of lights from those forts, answered at once by similar signals from our ships. Then we were driving inward, between the towering metal castles on either side, flashing in through the great vibration-wall and into the dying galaxy itself. With generators again humming at a high speed our half-hundred ships swept on, into the thronging thousands of dead and dying suns that swarmed before us, inside the colossal protecting shell of the great vibration-wall.

All about us now were great hordes of swarming dark-stars that we could but dimly glimpse, as our ships flashed between them, vast throngs of black and burned-out suns that outnumbered the few still flaming stars by hundreds to one. Here and there about us, though, as we swept on, we could make out a red sun or two, some comparatively brilliant and others so dark and far gone that they seemed only like giant cooling embers in the black heavens. Clusters there were, too, of which all but one or two suns would be black and dead, and as we flashed on into the depths of this universe we began to realize at last what tremendous necessity it had been that had sent the serpent-peoples driving out through the limitless void in search of a new universe.

Far ahead, though, there loomed before us as we sped on a trio of giant crimson suns more brilliant than any we had yet seen in this dying universe, and which hung at its center, each of them as large as great Canopus itself in our own galaxy. In a great triangle they hung there, two of them much brighter than the other, a mighty triplet of titanic waning suns that seemed like the dying monarchs of the vast and dying realm about them. It was down toward these three great suns that our ships were slanting now, down toward the space at the center of their great triangle, and now we saw that in that space there swung a single mighty world, a dark, immense planet of size inconceivable, almost as large as the three great suns at whose center it turned, and whose light and heat fell perpetually upon it.

* * *

Broader and broader the great turning world was growing as we slanted down toward it, until it lay like a tremendous dark shield beneath us, filling all the heavens below. As our ships sank still lower toward it, speed swiftly slackening, we began to make out details on its surface, to make out what seemed to be a vast mass of palely shining structures, towers and walls and vast, terraced buildings that glowed all with pale blue light, indescribably ghostly in appearance as they soared into the dusky, crimson light of the three encircling suns. Here and there through the masses of these blue-shining structures ran streets, narrow openings in which swarmed great masses of the writhing serpent-people. And as I gazed down upon this tremendous city, upon the countless glowing structures of pale blue light that made it up, my astonishment at what I saw broke from me in a startled cry.

"This city!" I exclaimed. "Its buildings are of vibrations like the great wall around their universe."

A city of vibrations. A mighty city that covered apparently all this giant planet, and yet whose every structure was built, not of matter but of etheric-vibrations that were matter-resistant like the great wall, vibrations infinitely more lasting and impenetrable than any matter, and projected upward at will into buildings of any shape or size. Here and there in the mighty city, even as we sped down over it, we could see buildings vanishing instanteously, could see other mighty buildings springing as instantly into being, all of the same pale blue light, reared or destroyed instantly by snapping on or off the vibrations that were projected upward to form them.

Now, as our ships slanted down over the vast mass of pale-glowing structures that stretched from horizon to horizon, I saw that ahead and beneath there lay amid those structures a mighty circular clearing, scores of miles in diameter and paved smoothly with the same pale blue force as the city's buildings and streets. In this vast circle, ranged regularly in long rows, rested thousands upon countless thousands of gleaming oval space-ships, in all stages of completion. Over and among them, swarming ceaselessly through them and toiling to complete them, moved mighty hordes of the serpent-creatures, armed with great tools of strange design, the thunderous clamor of their work coming up to us through the great planet's air. It was the immense workshop of the serpent-races that lay beneath us, I knew, in which their hordes labored ceaselessly to complete the mighty fleet that was to carry them through the void to our universe.

It was not the ranks of half-built ships, though, nor the toiling throngs among them, that held our gaze in the vast circular clearing over which we were racing. It was the colossal shape that loomed at the clearing's center and that occupied fully half the area of its vast circle, a stupendous metal cone-structure that rose in the air before us for fully a score of miles, the diameter of its base almost as great, a gigantic, smooth-sided mountain of metal towering there above the countless ships and workers in the great clearing around it, and above the far-stretching city about that clearing. Past its side our ships were speeding, and we could see now that about it and upon it there labored other great masses of serpent-creatures, swarming in and out of the heavy doors that swung open in its sides at various levels, and laboring upon the great masses of machinery that we could glimpse inside. Some of these, we saw, were great generators like those of our ships, making it clear that the vast cone was intended to race through space. Then, as Korus Kan's keen eyes peered toward and into its interior as we flashed past, he turned toward us, startled.

"It's a colossal death-beam projector!" he exclaimed. "One that can move through space like their ships-and that can stab forth a death-beam of unthinkable size. With that, when they complete it, they can wipe out all life on a whole world with a single flash of the stupendous beam."

Stunned, we gazed toward it as our ships flashed past. The tremendous cone itself was apparently complete, from vast base to the truncated, flattened tip. The generators that were to move it through space were apparently all installed, and the great hordes of serpent-workers who swarmed in it now were beginning to place in it the massed mechanisms for the production of the colossal death-beam, which would be projected up through a tremendous, hollow tube or tunnel running up from the great cone's interior to the great, round opening at its truncated tip. The terrific beam, generated in that interior, would flash out of that opening at the top in whatever direction the vast cone itself was headed in space, would flash through space with its tremendous power for immense distances, spreading out fanwise and expanding in every direction as it flashed on, until it struck the planet at which it was aimed, enveloping all that planet in its ghostly glow and wiping out instantly all life upon it. This, then, was the great weapon of irresistible power which the captured records of the serpent-creatures had mentioned. And irresistible it was, I saw now; for with it, when completed, the serpent-creatures could sally forth and with one sweep of the colossal beam destroy all fleets of space-ships opposing them by annihilating their crews, could descend upon our universe and with that same great beam wipe out all life upon world after world of our galaxy, swiftly, resistlessly, until in all our universe was left no living thing except themselves.

But now, even as we stared in horror and amazement at the vast cone, our ships were driving past it, still over the great clearing filled with close-ranked masses of the half-built ships, until before and beneath us lay the mighty circle's edge. And now we saw that beyond it, touching it, there lay another smaller circle of clear space, amid the vast city's crowding structures of blue light, a circle from which throngs of space-ships were constantly rising and upon which others were descending, it being obviously one of the points of departure and arrival for all ships. Down toward it our own ships were speeding, slower with every moment, until at last they had landed at this smaller circle's edge, our own closest to that edge, the pale-glowing mighty buildings towering up just beside us.

Then the space-doors of our ships were clanging open, and their occupants were writhing forth from them. A moment and the door of our prison snapped open; then, herded forward by a half-dozen of serpent-creatures armed with small death-beam tubes, we were marched out of the ship and onto the smooth pavement of blue force that covered this circle also. There, massed together, we were halted for a moment, and took the opportunity to stare about. From the ships behind us, just landed, the last of the serpent-crews had writhed forth, passing across to a narrow street that opened through the mass of towering, shimmering buildings before us, from the circular clearing's edge. We ourselves were being marched toward that street, now, the great oval ships lying empty and deserted behind us, and at sight of their open doors I turned and twitched the arm of Jhul Din, walking beside me.

"It's a chance in a million to get away," I whispered, to him and to Korus Kan. "If we can overpower these guards and get back inside our ship-"

They turned toward me, startled, and then as they glanced back toward the deserted ships their eyes lit with excitement. A moment more and I had whispered my plan, glancing toward the half-dozen guards behind us, and then the next moment we put it into effect, Jhul Din suddenly slumping to the blue-force pavement and lying motionless, sprawled as though suddenly stricken down. It was the most primitive of ruses, and I could only hope in that moment that our guards might not have had experience of it. The next moment, though, they had seen the motionless form of the big Spican, and with a natural perplexity had writhed forward toward it, holding their beam-tubes, though, gripped in the coils of their strange bodies, alertly toward ourselves. Beside the big crustacean they halted, tubes trained still upon us as they inspected him. Then the next moment the Spican had reached out his great arms with inconceivable swiftness and suddenness, grasping the serpent-guards beside him before they could turn their tubes down upon him, threshing with them in sudden fierce battle as we rushed forward to aid him.

The next moment we were all struggling there with those guards in a wild m�l�e, their deadly tubes knocked from their grasp by Jhul Din in his leap upon them. With the strength and fury of despair we flung ourselves upon them, rending their writhing bodies to fragments as they sought to coil about us, our hoarse shouts rising above their own hissing cries of fear and alarm. In but a moment, it seemed, we were crushing the last of them beneath us, Jhul Din and one or two of our crew leaping already toward the open door of our ship, while we staggered up to follow. But as we did so there came from behind us other hissing cries, and we whirled about, then stopped short. For back from the street into which they had just gone were rushing the serpent-crews of the ships behind us, a resistless horde that was flashing upon us with the ghostly death-beams of their tubes stabbing full toward us.

8: The Hall of the Living Dead

Racing forward as they were, the serpent-creatures rushing upon us could only loose their death-beams at chance upon us, and it was that alone that saved us, the deadly rays going wide except for one that struck and annihilated two of our party in its wild whirling. Then, before they could loose the beams again upon us, we had rushed forward to meet them and were among them; while at the same moment I shouted hoarsely over my shoulder to Jhul Din, who with his three followers had reached now the open door of our ship, behind us, and who now had hesitated for an instant as he saw our new foes rush down upon us.

"Go on, Jhul Din!" I cried. "Get away in the ship-we'll hold them till you get clear-"

Then we were meeting the serpent-creatures before us, and the next few moments we seemed surrounded, weighed down, by a solid mass of writhing bodies at which we struck crazily with the last of our strength. Even as we struggled wildly, though, I heard above the shouts and hissing cries about me the clang of the ship's space-doors, the swift humming of its generators; then as I staggered clear of my opponents for a moment I saw the great craft, with Jhul Din at the controls in its pilot room, lifting suddenly from the clearing, slanting steeply upward at immense speed, vanishing almost instantly in the crimson sunlight above. I yelled with exultation at the sight, and then was pulled down once more by my opponents, held tightly with Korus Kan and the others, as with wild hissing cries the greater part of the serpent-creatures rushed to their ships.

A moment more and two score of their craft were shooting sharply upward in hot pursuit of Jhul Din and his fleeing ship. Held tightly by our serpent-captors, we waited with them the return of the pursuing ships. Would they catch the big Spican? Slowly the minutes dragged past, while in the gulf of space above us, we knew, Jhul Din and his three followers were racing, twisting, fighting against that remorseless pursuit that would track him by the space-charts. Then at last, after a wait that seemed eternities in length, the dark, long shapes of the ships that had pursued him drove down from above and landed beside us, their serpent-crews emerging, but without trace of Jhul Din or his ship. Whether he had met his end beneath their death-beams, we could not say nor guess.

I knew, though, that they would hardly have given up the pursuit unsuccessfully so soon, and it was with doubt and fear in my heart that I rose now in response to the motioned commands of our captors. Guarding us now with a score or more of death-beam tubes they marched us across the circle toward the street that opened from it, and then down that street's length, between the mighty structures of blue force on either side. Half-transparent as were those buildings of pale blue light, we could see in them all the various floors and levels, as though in buildings of blue glass, and on those levels great ranks of half-glimpsed mechanisms tended by moving, writhing throngs of serpent-beings. Other throngs of them moved about us in the narrow street, from building to building, passing and repassing around us as we marched along.

To these, though, and to the buildings about us we paid but small attention; for at the end of the narrow street down which we were marching there loomed a great blue-shining structure of the same vibration as the others, but which dwarfed them by its tremendous size. Its vast, terraced sides slanted up for level upon mighty level, and as we neared it we saw that the street itself ended in it, passing through the high, great doorway before us into the shining structure's interior. In and out of it were pouring hordes of the serpent-creatures, and into it we were marched by our guards, through the great hall inside and on through a succession of other corridors in which writhed serpent-throngs. Through the open doors of the rooms along those corridors, as we passed by them, I could see serpent-creatures grouped about low, desk-like platforms, could see massed rows of great mechanisms that seemed tabulating or recording machines of some sort, saw other great rooms filled with flexible metal rolls like those we had captured with our oval ship, great collections of written records, and realized that this huge building must hold within itself the central controlling government of all the races of the serpent-creatures, on this great central world and on the worlds that revolved about the few living suns in the universe about us.

Our captors halted us, at last, before a door heavily guarded by serpent-creatures with ray-tubes, and while one of our own guards passed through the door into the great rooms we could glimpse inside, the remainder kept close watch upon us. I sensed that our own fate was being decided in those rooms beside us, and a few moments later saw that my guess had been right, for there came out the serpent-creature who had gone in, giving to our guards brief hissing orders. At once they marched us onward, emerging again into the great central hall that ran through the vast, blue-shimmering building, and progressing with us down that great, crowded corridor, until they turned us sharply to the right, through a big open door into a mighty hall or room, the nature and purpose of which we could not grasp for the moment.

It was filled with great, transparent cases, ranged in long, regular rows, extending from flickering blue-light wall to wall of the vast hall. In those cases there were shapes and figures, rigid and unmoving, that had apparently once been living things, and that were of a strangeness inconceivable. In hundreds, in thousands, they were grouped there in the protecting cases, beasts and beings all but indescribable in appearance, so strange were they even to our eyes, which had seen all the countless forms of life of our own galaxy. There was, in a case near us, a vast flat thing of white flesh, disk-like and scores of feet in diameter, with a single staring eye at its center. In another case was a great, many-legged cylinder of flesh without discernible features whatever. In still another, just before us, a black, powerful-looking insect-shape that was apparently double-headed, with two sets of black, beady eyes. All down the great hall's length stretched the rows of cases, filled with beings of which the sight of some alone was a creeping horror, and as we gazed at that incredible collection of alien forms in amazement, its significance rushed upon me.

"It's a museum," I exclaimed. "A great collection of the living forms that have existed in this dying universe-preserved here for countless ages, perhaps, out of the past."

As I spoke, though, there were coming down toward us from the far end of the great hall two serpent-creatures who seemed the custodians of this strange collection. Our guards addressed to them a few hissing commands, and the two turned, seemed to survey the cases about them, while we stared in perplexity. Then one turned toward a niche inset in the wall, in which rested two transparent containers or tubes of liquid, one of bright red and the other of green, and a long, slender metal needle that was apparently a hypodermic of some sort. Thrusting the needle into the red liquid, the serpent-creature holding it advanced to the case nearest us, which contained only the double-headed insect-creature. He swung the side of the case open, and then, with a swift jab, inserted the needle in the body of the thing inside.

There was a moment of silence, and then, to our amazement and horror, the insect-thing moved, its eyes roving from side to side, its limbs twitching. The thing was alive! The two serpent-creatures stepped toward the case, as it came to life, holding death-beam tubes toward it and addressing it in hissing tones. Apparently it was of some intelligence, for in response to those orders it stepped outside the case, down the hall toward another case which was all but filled by other strange shapes. Into this it stepped, at the command of the two, and then the one with the needle filled it with the green fluid, and inserted this in turn into the thing's body. At once that body stiffened, ceased to move, the thing becoming as rigid and unlife-like in appearance as before, its eyes staring stonily ahead in all the appearance of death.

Horror filled me at the sight, horror that sickened me, for I saw now that the things about us, the countless strange shapes in these rows of cases, were all as alive and conscious as ourselves, their life and intelligence unharmed but their bodies thrown into a state of rigid suspended animation by the insertion of the green fluid into them, a fluid that must be like the poisons with which some insects are able to keep their captured prey alive and unmoving indefinitely, a fluid that suspended all animation instantly and that could only be neutralized by the injection of the opposing red fluid, though always the victim remained conscious and alive. Alive! These myriad alien shapes about us-rigid and motionless, yet living and conscious, living perhaps for ages in that living death-my brain reeled at the thought. I turned to Korus Kan, sick with horror, but then stopped short, stiffened. For now the serpent-creature grasping the metal needle and the tube of green fluid was coming toward us.

All the horror of the fate intended for us burst across my brain in one flash of awful comprehension, then, and a strangled cry broke from me. "They're going to keep us here too." I cried, pointing with trembling hand. "Keep us here as strange beings-in living death in this museum of strange beings."

* * *

A moment we stood, in horror-stricken silence, and then as the full awfulness of the thing reserved for us penetrated the brains of my companions they uttered a medley of hoarse shouts of rage and horror and as one leapt forward upon the serpent-creatures with the fluid-tubes and upon our guards.

I think that we expected no better than death in that moment, for the death-beam tubes of the guards were full upon us, but I think too that we all preferred a swift, clean death to the horror of living death that awaited us in this museum of hell. But the very motive that made us desire death prevented the guards from loosing it upon us, preferring to follow their orders and place us in the collection about us rather than annihilate us. For instead of loosing the rays, as we sprang, they, leapt to meet us, at the same time giving utterance to loud, hissing cries of alarm.

Our guards outnumbered us, and though we leapt upon them with all the energy of horror and despair, striving to wrest the death-tubes from their grasp, they coiled about and held us, while into the great hall from the big corridor outside there rushed in answer to their alarm other scores of serpent-creatures, leaping likewise upon us. Wearied as we were and outnumbered by five to one, our struggle, though fierce, was of short duration, and then we were held completely by the creatures about us, while toward us again came the two serpent-creatures with the metal needle and two liquid-tubes. First toward me they came, dipping the needle into the green liquid and then stabbing it into my arm.

I shrank deeply as the sharp needle pierced my skin, but the next moment ceased to shrink, as through me there ran a wave of cold, a flood of utter iciness that held me motionless, unable to move. No muscle of mine, down to the smallest, could I control, lying there staring straight ahead, unmoving, unwinking, unbreathing even. My lungs, my heart, my blood, all had stopped moving in the instant that the poison flooded through me, yet my brain was as clear or clearer than ever, coldly clear, as though attached to it was no body whatever. My senses, though, still functioned, and though all power of motion had left me I could still see and hear as clearly as ever. It was as though my brain had been suddenly lifted from the mass of flesh that was my body, and endowed with a strange, lifeless life of its own.

Now the guards rose from me, leaving me lying motionless and rigid, and turned toward Korus Kan, who was being held down by others. His metal body seemed to puzzle them for an instant, and then they solved the problem by injecting the needle of green fluid into the nerve-tissues at the edge of his eyes, from which it would spread instantly to the other living organs cased by his metal body. Another moment and he too lay like me, rigid and powerless to move, our eyes meeting in an unchanging, stony stare. Within minutes more the green fluid had been injected into the last of our score of followers, and we had all become but rigid living statues, our consciousness and senses alone unaffected. Then by the serpent-creatures we were set into the transparent case from which the double-headed insect-thing had been moved to make way for us, were placed in a sitting position with backs against the case's sides, and then it was closed and the guards passed out of the big hall, leaving in it only the two serpent-creatures who were its custodians.

Rigid, unmoving, unbreathing, yet with consciousness, mind and senses as clear as ever, living brains cased in bodies that were helpless and motionless, I think that no position of any in all time could have been more terrible than ours. Had consciousness been suspended also, with the powers of our bodies, the captivity we suffered would have been but a dreamless sleep, at least; but to allow our consciousness and intelligence to remain, our bodies severed from our control-that was a torture that surely none other could ever equal. Statue-like we sat there, while hour followed hour, gazing always in the same direction with unmoving and unwinking eyes. Certainly no wonder would it have been had we gone mad in the first hours of that ghastly, terrible imprisonment. As the hours, the days, dragged past, though, I bent all my mental efforts toward the keeping of my sanity, and though at times my brain reeled beneath our terrible predicament, I desperately forced my thoughts into other channels. From where I sat I could gaze out into the great corridor outside the room, and that at least gave me something moving to contemplate, as through it swept the never-ceasing hordes of the serpent-people, a rush of activity that dwindled never until the rising of the darkest of the three suns marked the coming of the night, the sleep-period of the serpent-people. The light of that darker sun was so far dimmer than that of the other two that as this world turned between the three one-third of each day was spent in a dusky red darkness, a strange night in which all activity in the vast serpent-city about us seemed to cease, only our room's two serpent-guards and some others here and there outside remaining alert, our two room-guards being replaced at the beginning of each night by two others who alternated with them in their duties.

It was these things alone, though, the coming of night and the changing of our guards, the cessation and recommencement of the activity in the corridor outside, the waning and waxing of the crimson light that fell through the great building's flickering blue vibration-walls, that alone marked for us the passage of time. Day was following day while we sat on there in living death, unmoving as stones, and I knew that with each day the great fleet of the serpent-creatures I had glimpsed in the clearing would be approaching nearer to completion, as would the colossal death-beam cone with which they meant to wipe out all the races of all the galaxy's worlds. And we, on whom had rested the one chance of our universe, had failed-we were prisoners. I could not believe that Jhul Din, with his two or three followers, had managed to get through the great vibration-wall about this universe and speed to the Andromeda universe for help. Our last hope was gone, and the last hope of our galaxy with it, prisoned as we were in the helpless flesh of our own bodies, from which there could be no escape, lacking even the power to destroy ourselves and end our endless torture.

* * *

The passing days became blurred and confused in my mind, as we sat on there, and I felt that my brain was beginning to give at last beneath the awful strain. Time still I could roughly measure, though, by the waning of activity in the corridor outside, by the darkening of the crimson light that slanted through the pale blue walls. I think that it was on the tenth day of our imprisonment that I watched that light darkening, as always, wondering for how many times I was to see it thus, for how many days, years, ages, we were to lie in this living death, in the serpent-creatures' museum. As I watched, the passing throngs in the corridor outside were thinning, disappearing, with the coming of the dusky night, and soon there was almost complete silence about us, only the low hissing of the two serpent-guards, near the room's door, as they conversed there, breaking the stillness. Then suddenly my brooding thoughts were broken into by sharp surprise as I glimpsed a big, stealthy shape that showed itself for a moment in the corridor outside, and then dodged swiftly back.

With a sudden flame of excitement leaping in me for the first time since our imprisonment, I gazed toward the door, eyes unmoving as always. A moment more and the dark, erect shape that I had glimpsed outside came slowly into view once more, peering around the door's edge at the two serpent-guards, who for the moment were turned away from it. Seeing this, the lurking shape came slowly into the room, through the door from the shadows of the corridor, and as it did so I saw it clearly, and well it was for me that I could not speak or surely I would have shouted aloud. For it was Jhul Din.

A great wave of hope flooded through my brain as I saw the big Spican move stealthily inside, a thick metal bar in his grasp, his eyes roving about the dusky-lit great room. Then, as they fell upon our own case, upon us sitting motionless, I saw him gasp. A moment he surveyed us, my eyes staring stonily straight into his own as we sat still rigid and unmoving, and then he had turned, was moving silently toward the two unsuspecting guards. Closer he crept toward them, while I watched in an agony of suspense, and then as he reached them, raised his great bar above his head, the two creatures, warned by some slight sound, whirled suddenly around and confronted him.

Instantly the death-tubes they held came up, but in the moment that they did so Jhul Din's bar had smashed down upon them in a great, crushing blow that laid both lifeless on the blue force-floor. Then the Spican sprang to our case, opening its side and lifting us out, seeking with rough restorative measures to revive us. Yet we lay as silent and rigid as ever, and I saw despair creep into his eyes, could have shouted to him in my agony of mind had not my muscles been as far-severed from my brain's control as ever. Then the Spican raised from his fruitless efforts, gazed despairingly about, until his eyes fell upon the niche in the wall that held the tubes of red and green fluid. With a leap he was upon them, bringing them and the needle back toward us.

A moment he studied them, in doubt, then inserted the needle in the green fluid and pierced my forearm with it. I could have screamed to him his mistake had I had power of speech, for the green fluid injected into me had no effect upon me whatever, since I lay already beneath its force. Seeing this he swiftly made trial of the red fluid, injecting this in the same manner into my body, and then, as he gazed anxiously down upon my rigid figure, I felt a sudden warmth flooding through me, and for the first time in all those days became aware of my body, felt muscles and limbs moving in answer to my will's commands, felt heart and breathing starting after their long cessation. Then I was staggering up to my feet, the Spican's great arm about me, reeling upward with muscles utterly strange and cramped after those days of living death.

"Jhul Din!" I cried, my voice strange to my own ears after that time of speechlessness, and he gripped my arm reassuringly.

"Steady, Dur Nal," he said. "You're out of that now, and we'll win clear of this hellish city yet."

As he spoke he was dropping to the floor, injecting swiftly into the bodies of the rest the red fluid, beginning with Korus Kan, and as he did so he explained to me swiftly how he and his three followers had managed to elude the ships that had pursued him by fleeing from them into a near-by cluster of dead and dying suns, and pretending to have perished by crashing into a great dark star, landing his ship upon its barren, burned-out surface and escaping the scrutiny of the pursuing ships, who returned in the belief that he and his ship had met annihilation. In that hiding-place, upon that black and airless and lightless star, he had remained for days, not daring to venture forth amid the swarms of serpent-ships that filled the space-lanes about him, yet resolved to return and ascertain our fate. When at last, days later, he had been able to venture out, back to this vast world and down upon it through the dusky night, he had boldly landed the ship where it would excite no suspicion, in the landing-circle from which he had first escaped in it. Then, leaving his little crew of three in it and stealing through the shadows of the silent streets toward the great central building where he hoped against hope to find some trace of us, he had made his way through the darkened corridors of the huge structure until he had stumbled upon the strange museum of the serpent-people where we were prisoned.

While he swiftly explained this to me Korus Kan and our followers were staggering up beside me as the injections of red fluid revived them, one by one, and I turned toward the door, then uttered a horror-stricken exclamation. For in the corridor outside a single serpent-creature faced us, attracted perhaps by the sound of our voices, its glassy eyes full upon us. Even in the instant that I saw it, before ever I could leap upon it, it had turned with incredible quickness and was flashing back down the corridor, farther into the great building, uttering as it did so a high, hissing cry. And in an instant that cry was taken up and re-echoed in all the great structure about us, by the roused serpent-creatures who were rushing in answer to it.

"The alarm!" I cried. "Out of the building and to the ship."

With lightning swiftness now Jhul Din was injecting in the last of our followers the restorative red fluid, and then as those last ones stumbled up into consciousness beside us, we raced toward the door, out into the corridor. There, abruptly, we stopped short, our last wild hopes of escape in that instant blasted. For less than a thousand feet down the great corridor from us, pouring out into it from every quarter of the vast building's interior in answer to the hissing cries of alarm, there was racing down upon us a great mass of hundreds upon hundreds of the writhing serpent-creatures.

9: A Dash for Freedom

Doom stared at us in that instant as the serpent-creatures rushed down the great corridor toward us, for well we knew that never could we win our way down the long street to our waiting ship with that pursuit behind us. For a flashing moment as we stood there, stunned, it seemed that recapture was inevitable, and then as a sudden thought flared across my brain I cried out to my companions.

"Get out of the building!" I cried. "I can hold them here-"

They hesitated, and then sprang down the corridor toward the street, while at the same instant I leapt into the great museum-hall from which we had just emerged. With a single bound I had grasped the needle and tube of restorative red fluid and was at the great transparent cases, ripping the sides open frantically and stabbing the needle with lightning swiftness into their occupants. Those in a dozen or more cases I had swiftly treated thus before I dropped the tube and needle and leapt back to the door, into the corridor. As I did so I had seen the first of the strange, terrible shapes I had touched with the needle beginning to stir, to move from their cases.

As I sprang back out into the corridor, though, the racing masses of the serpent-creatures were but a scant hundred feet behind me, my own companions racing out of the building ahead of me, now. The serpent-things loosed no rays upon us, desiring, I knew, to return us to that hell of living death from which we had escaped, but as I sprang down the corridor they were so close behind that another moment, I knew, would see my capture and that of my friends ahead. Then, just as the serpent-creatures, racing behind me, reached the door of the museum, they halted, recoiled. For out into the corridor from that museum-hall had flopped a great, terrible shape, the mighty disk of pale flesh with a single central eye that my needle had been first to revive.

Instantly it had moved upon the serpent-creatures upon whom its glaring eye fell, and before they could escape had thrown its vast disk of flesh about a mass of scores of them, bunching its body swiftly together then with terrific power and crushing them within it. At another mass of them it leapt, ravening with terrific fury after its prisonment of untold ages of living death, while out of the museum there came after it the other shapes I had revived, awful insect-beings that leapt upon the serpent-creatures with terrible claws and fangs, heedless of the death-beams that flashed toward them, many-limbed things of flesh that whirled forward as fiercely to the attack, grotesque, terrible monsters of a dozen different sorts that leapt now upon the serpent-creatures who had prisoned them for ages with inconceivable raging power, heaping about them great masses of crushed and mangled serpent-dead.

Only in a glance over my shoulder did I glimpse that massacre of the serpent-creatures behind me, for I was racing on down the corridor and out of the building into the narrow street, where my friends awaited me. With a word I explained to them what had happened, and instantly we set off down the street, between the great, towering buildings of beaming blue force that lay silent and dead now in the dusky darkness, only their own flickering light and that of the vast, dim-red sun that swung in the black heavens above lighting us forward as we raced on. Behind, though, in the great building from which we had fled, were rising appalling cries, the hissing utterances of the serpent-creatures and the strange and awful cries of the things with which they battled.

Now about us were rising other cries as the serpent-creatures across all the city began to rouse beneath the terrific din of the wild fight in the central building. Behind us, as we raced on down the narrow street, we saw them emerging from the buildings, gazing about, and then as we were glimpsed, fleeing toward the landing-circle where lay the ships, other cries went up and after us leapt the serpent-things from all along the street, pouring into the street from its buildings and from adjacent streets and racing after us.

But a few hundred yards ahead lay the landing-circle, and as we ran on we could make out the gleaming, great shapes of the oval ships lying upon it, could discern the shape of our own awaiting ship, at the circle's edge, its door open before us. Toward that black opening, as toward some tremendous magnet, we stumbled on with the last of our strength, but close behind came the serpent-creatures in ever-increasing masses, the alarm spreading now over all the gigantic city about us, and there lay still a distance that seemed infinite between us and that open door. Then, when we were but a scant hundred feet from it, the serpent-creatures hardly more than that behind us, Korus Kan slipped, stumbled and went down.