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!"