As the mighty swarm of Andromeda ships from behind us drove down upon the half-thousand serpent-craft ahead, I could only stare for a moment in stupefied surprise, so stunning had been our sudden transition from death to deliverance. I saw the long, flat craft of the Andromedans, a full thousand in number, flashing down on the serpent-ships in one great swoop, saw the latter, in groups, in dozens, in scores, crumpling and constricting as the deadly cylinders of the Andromedan ships were turned toward them. Within an instant, it seemed, a full two hundred of the half-thousand serpent-ships had crumpled and whirled away beneath the terrible, invisible force of the cylinders, though death-beams were raging out thickly all about the swooping Andromedan ships. Then, with almost half their fleet wiped out, the remaining three hundred serpent-ships, including their score of great disk-attraction ships, had whirled around and were racing back into space toward their own dying universe, fleeing from the terrific blows of the attacking ships that had come out from the Andromeda universe ahead, just in time to save us.
Now, as the serpent-fleet flashed from sight, into the void toward its own universe, the thousand Andromedan ships massed swiftly and moved toward our own, that hung still motionless there in the gulf of space. In tense silence we watched them come, hoping that they might not set us down, too, as enemies because of our serpent-ship, but they turned none of their deadly cylinders toward us. Those cylinders, as I was later to learn, were in reality projectors that shot forth a shaft of invisible force, one that caused the ether about any ship it struck to compress about that ship instantly with terrific force, compressing thus into small compass the ether-vibrations that were the matter of the ship, and thus crumpling that matter itself, in an instant. It was a weapon fully as terrible as the crimson destruction-rays of our galaxy's ships or the pale death-beams of the serpent-creatures, a shaft of crumpling force that we knew could destroy us instantly. Instead of loosing it upon us, though, they slanted down until one of the foremost ships was hanging just above our own.
We guessed then that they meant to enter our ship, and in a moment our guess was confirmed as the long, flat ship hovering above sank downward until its lower surface was lying along the upper surface of our own oval craft, the two touching. Then we heard a section of the underside of the ship above sliding back, and a moment later, at my order, one of our crew slid open our own upper space-door. The openings in the two ships, in the upper side of ours and the lower side of theirs, were thus together, pressed so closely by the weight of the upper ship as it pressed down upon us that it formed a hermetically sealed opening connecting the two. Then, down through that opening from the ship above, down into the corridor of our ship and toward our pilot room, there came a half-dozen of the Andromedans from the ship above us, a half-dozen of the people of the Andromeda universe.
I do not know what weird and alien shapes we had expected to see in these beings of a different universe, but I do know that never had our imaginations envisaged creatures of so utterly strange a nature as these that came toward us now. For they were gaseous! Tall columns of misty green gas, that held always to the same pillar-like outline, as unchanging of form as though of solid flesh, and that were gliding along the corridor toward us. Upright, unchanging columns of green, opaque vapor, from near the top of whose six feet of height there branched out on each side a smaller arm of the same thick green gas, arms that they moved at will, and in which some of them held instruments and weapons. Tall, erect columns of thick, green vapor, without features of any kind that we could see that yet were living, intelligent and powerful beings like ourselves. Their bodies, their two arms, their very organs and features and senses formed of gas, just as our bodies are solid, and that of a jelly-fish liquid.
Down the corridor they came toward us, gliding smoothly forward, halting just before us and surveying us, I knew, by whatever strange sense of sight was within their gaseous bodies. Dumbly we stared toward them, for the first time now wholly appreciating the immense difference between us and them; then, at a loss for another gesture, I held out my hand toward the foremost of them. Instantly his own arm came out toward me, gripped my hand with a grip as solid as though that arm had been of flesh instead of gas, a grasp that though cold was real and tangible. When the one before me had withdrawn his grasp, then I spoke aloud to him, but there came no reply. Instead the Andromedan extended toward me, in the grasp of his other arm, a small globe of what seemed misty glass, a few inches in diameter and mounted upon a little metal base. As he held it, though, pressing a tiny button in the base, the misty globe suddenly glowed with light, and then in it I could see figures moving, as though in some tiny cinema-screen.
The scene in it was that of a great, gleaming-walled room, utterly strange in appearance, with a mass of shining, unfamiliar apparatus grouped about it, among which moved a dozen or more Andromedans like those before me, upright columns of green gas gliding to and fro, inspecting and tending the different mechanisms. Then all of them grouped about a single one, a vast tube that I sensed was a great telescope, which pointed out into the blackness of space, and down from which there fell upon a broad white surface a swift-moving picture, one of a single oval space-ship rushing through the void, with Korus Kan, Jhul Din and myself visible in its white-lit pilot room, while not far behind it there raced in pursuit of it a great swarm of serpent-manned ships. Then the Andromedans grouped about that great telescope were seen moving swiftly over to an apparatus at the room's center, apparently one of communication; and the next moment the whole scene had vanished, and was replaced by one of a thousand long, flat ships-Andromedan ships-slanting swiftly upward from a great world and into space. Then that, too, had clicked off; there was a flashing scene of those same thousand ships leaping upon our pursuers as they had done but a moment before; then all light in the little instrument had vanished as the Andromedan before me snapped off its control button.
* * *
A moment we remained in silence, puzzled, until Korus Kan broke the stillness with an exclamation. "It's a communication instrument, Dur Nal," he exclaimed. "One that shows in visible pictures the thoughts of whoever it is connected to-it's their method of communication with each other, apparently."
I nodded now, with sudden understanding. "Then that's the way that they discovered our peril-came to save us," I said. "That's what they're telling us."
But now the Andromedan had held the little instrument forward to me, and as I took it, in some perplexity, he silently indicated two little round metal plates inset on its bottom, which he had grasped when holding the thing and which I now grasped in turn, pressing the tiny control button as I did so. The next instant a current of thrilling force seemed racing up my arms, through my brain, and in the little glowing sphere appeared only a confusion of vague forms. Then, as my brain cleared, I concentrated my thoughts on our mission and its reason; and at once, in the instrument's glowing sphere, there appeared clearly the five thousand serpent-ships attacking our universe, destroying our fleet by means of their death-beams and attraction-ships, settling upon the worlds and suns of the Cancer cluster. Then, with the shifting of my thoughts, there was a glimpse of our ship flashing out into the void from our own universe toward that of the Andromeda, and then the little sphere had gone black as I snapped off the button that controlled it.
For the moment we could not know whether we had been fully understood by the beings before us, but the next instant one of them pointed with a gaseous limb toward the gathered suns of the Andromeda universe, flaring in the blackness ahead, and as we nodded and pointed also, they stepped over beside us. The next moment the opening in the under side of the ship above and the space-door in our own ship had clanged shut, and as the whole great fleet of ships about us began to move toward the Andromeda universe, Korus Kan opened up the power of our own generators, moving smoothly along among them. Within moments more, the strange, gaseous forms of the Andromedans standing there beside us, our ship and all those about it were flashing at full speed toward the great galaxy ahead.
From the ship's hull beneath I could hear an odd, grating sound, as of the clash of metal on metal, that continued to come to my ears as we flashed on, but in the moments, the hours that followed, I paid but small attention to it, engrossed as we all were in the magnificent spectacle of the universe ahead. Like a tremendous belt of suns across the black heavens it was, largening in vastness and brilliance with every moment that we flashed nearer, until by the time we had raced toward it for a half-score of hours it seemed to fill all the firmament before us with its hosts of flaming stars. We were flashing on in the same course as the ships about us, heading toward a spot where there shone two great yellow suns that were like twin wardens of this mighty universe. And as we hummed through the void toward them, sweeping in nearer to this great galaxy's edge, the ships about us and our own ship, too, had begun to slacken their tremendous speed, until at last at a reduced velocity we were driving in past the outmost suns of the Andromeda universe.
The dull grating sound from beneath was persisting, still, but now interest in all else had left me as there spread before and about me the wonders of this stupendous universe. A universe it was as large as our own, as large as the dying serpent-universe, but different from either. For if ours was a young universe, with the majority of our stars glowing with blue and white-hot youth, and the serpent-universe an aged and dying one, with burned-out and waning crimson suns, this one before us was a universe in its prime-a universe the vast majority of whose suns were flaming yellow with their greatest splendor, a golden galaxy of living stars infinitely different from the dim, dying universe from which we had just escaped, and infinitely different, too, from the giant, white, young suns and raw, vast nebulae of our own youthful universe.
As we sped in between those gathered, flaming suns, though, as we drove in past the edge of their great mass, my eyes began to take in their position and arrangement, and as they did so I saw that not alone in age or youthfulness was this universe different from any other I had seen. For as we flashed into the thronging suns, past a great group of them massed to our right, I saw that the suns of that group were gathered in a great circle, a score of mighty flaming suns, each set in position with mathematical exactness, forming a perfect circle as they hung here in space, one of the two great yellow suns I had glimpsed from afar having a place in that circle. And inside that mighty circle of suns I glimpsed a vast mass of swarming planets-hundreds, thousands even, of great, turning worlds that moved in regular orbits inside the great ring of suns about them, lit and warmed perpetually by their encircling fires.
Stupefied, stunned, by that tremendous sight, I did not, could not, for the moment understand the significance of what I was seeing. But as we flashed on past the great circle and its swarming enclosed planets, as we approached another close group of suns, I saw that it, too, was formed of a score or more of great suns grouped in a perfect circle like the first, and that inside that circle of suns there swung also hundreds and thousands of whirling worlds! And beyond it shone another mighty ring of suns, and another, and others, as far as the eye could reach, all the suns in all this tremendous universe being grouped by the score into great circles inside of which swung countless planets! And then, at last, there broke upon my reeling brain the meaning of what I was seeing.
"Suns in circles," I cried, as I gazed out across that mighty vista. "They've done this themselves-consciously, deliberately. They've placed all the suns of their universe in great circle-groups, so that inside those circles their countless peoples can exist."
For I saw, now, that it was so, that only by intelligent design could the countless swarms of thronging suns about us ever have been placed in these mathematically perfect circles, inside which their great planets swung. Long ago their universe must have been much like our own, a great chaos of suns reeling blindly in all directions, swarming like a vast hive of stars, each with its own few planets moving about it But as their numbers had increased, as they had come to need every world, every planet for their existence, they had grasped their suns with titanic, unguessable forces, had swung them from their accustomed chaos into order, into great circles, placing inside those circles all their countless worlds-worlds of which thousands could then exist upon the light and heat of a mere score of suns by having those suns grouped in a ring about them.
Now, driving in past great circle after circle of flaming suns, past the countless planets that moved inside those circles, we were flashing on with the ships about us toward the center of this strange and mighty universe. On our space-chart I could see that thick about us were great masses of interstellar traffic, which cleared away before us as we drove inward. Circle after circle of fiery suns we were leaving behind, mass upon mass of swarming planets inside, but never on our space-charts showed any wandering dark-stars, or meteor-swarms, or vagabond, sunless worlds, all matter in this universe apparently having been swept up by the Andromedans and used as habitations for their races, inside the great sun-circles. A gigantic mass of perfectly grouped stars they stretched about us, those sun-circles, filling the heavens about us; but now, far ahead, there shone out ever more brilliant at the center of this great universe another great circle of suns, that seemed the largest in all this universe. A score of titanic, flaming stars, they hung there at this galaxy's center, and it was toward these that our racing ships were heading.
Toward them we gazed with intense interest as our ships fled on, but suddenly were startled back to realization of our immediate surroundings by a great rumbling and grating from beneath, our ship swaying to one side and heeling sickeningly over, even as it flashed ahead. In sudden tense silence we stood, listening to that rumbling and cracking beneath, and then up from the speech-tube beside me there came a startled cry from one of our crew below.
"The ship's splitting," he cried. "The walls have been grating and giving ever since we ran through that radioactive disintegrating-region-and now the ship's beginning to break in two."
There was an instant of silence in the pilot room, the only sound that fearful grating rumble from beneath as gradually the ship's walls, weakened and crumbled by the disintegrating vibrations of the radio-active region through which we had plunged, began at last to split. A moment more, we knew, would see our ship riven apart there in space, with instant annihilation the fate of all of us. Silent, stunned, for a moment we stood there, the Andromedans beside us comprehending the situation as well as ourselves; then I whirled around to Korus' Kan, flung my arm up toward the great central sun-circle that lay now full ahead, nearest of all the sun-groups to our onward-racing ships.
"Full speed!" I cried to him. "There's a chance still that we can get to those suns and worlds before the ship breaks up." With that cry the Antarian flung open the power-control, and instantly our ship, rumbling and groaning still as its walls gave about us, plunged on at utmost speed. I knew that we had perhaps a chance in a thousand to reach the worlds inside that sun-circle before our craft broke beneath our feet, but it was our only chance, and as we reeled on now with the generators roaring their greatest power, and with a thunderous, cracking roar rising from beneath also as our walls parted, it was with the consciousness that the next few moments would seal our fate. The great fleet of Andromedan ships about us had leapt forward with us, were behind and about us, but for the moment all our attention was centered upon the great circle of suns ahead, largening before us swiftly as with one last great burst of speed our ship shot through the void toward it.
Our ship swayed blindly over, now, even as it reeled on through space, another great crash of riven metal coming to our ears from beneath, the floor slanting steeply up beneath us. Flung against the wall as we were, though, Korus Kan clung still to the controls, heading our swaying flying-ship straight on toward the sun-circle, until in a moment more we had reached that circle, were slanting downward at the same terrific speed above that great ring of mighty suns. Inside that vast circle there moved a mighty swarm of thronging worlds, as in the other sun-circles, but at the very center of this vast swarm of planets there hung motionless a single gigantic planet, largest by far of all in this universe, a huge central world down toward which our own crazily swaying ships and the ships about us were slanting.
Down-down-there was a sudden rush of air about our ship as we shot toward the surface of the great planet, and I had a flashing glimpse of that surface, scores of miles beneath, through our window-a smooth, park-like surface swarming with hordes of the gaseous Andromedans and with ascending and descending ships, a surface in which I seemed to glimpse innumerable round, well-like openings, but upon which I could see no buildings. Abruptly, though, even as I glanced downward, there came a tremendous final cracking from our ship's center, each end tipped sharply down from that center as the crumbling craft broke cleanly in half, and then the two wrecked halves of it were whirling down toward the surface of the great world far below.