the cavern, between the rows of great machines, toward the corridor
opening in the opposite wall. The thronging nebula-creatures about us
paid us no attention whatever, taking us for but one of the scores of
turtle-machines that were busy about us. Hearts beating high with our
success we glided on toward the dark wall-opening that was our goal. A
score of feet from it we suddenly held our breath as another of the
turtle-machines collided suddenly with our own, but in a moment it had
glided away and in another moment we were again in the shadows of a
dim-lit corridor, gliding down its length toward the shaft that led
upward.
We reached the corridor's end, sprang out of our machine and through
the door into the well-like bottom of the shaft. At once the plant-man
was clambering up the peg-ladder, followed by the Arcturian with myself
last. Up, up we climbed, putting all our strength into the effort, for
we knew that not many minutes remained for action. Then suddenly as I
looked down I stopped and breathed an exclamation; for standing at the
bottom of the shaft were two of the nebula-creatures, not more than a
hundred feet below us--two white masses of flesh that were staring up
toward us.
A moment we hung motionless on the pegs, while the two weird beings
gazed up, and then we saw one of them glide back into the corridor,
racing back to the great caverns to sound the alarm, we knew. The
other gazed up at us once more and then, to our horror, began to climb
swiftly up after us.
* * * * *
I think now that of all that befell us there in the nebula world the
moments that followed were the most agonizing. Swinging ourselves up
by sheer muscular power, from peg to peg, we clambered up that giddy
ladder, through a darkness impossible of description. Somewhere in
that darkness below me, I knew, the nebula-creature that pursued us
was swinging up after me, and I knew that to such a creature the
negotiating of this dizzy ladder was child's play. Yet, spurred on by
deadly fear, I struggled upward with superhuman speed, a hundred feet,
another hundred, until a hope flashed across my brain that the thing
that pursued us might have given up that pursuit. Then above us I
glimpsed a little dot of glowing light, knew it for the shaft's mouth
far above. And at the same moment that I glimpsed it, I felt a tug
on my ankles, a powerful arm fasten round my body, and knew that the
pursuing creature had reached me.
I cried out involuntarily as I felt my feet twitched off the pegs on
which they had rested, and dangled for a moment there by my hands while
the creature below me tightened his grip on my feet and began to pull
me steadily downward. All his force he must have put into that effort,
and I felt my hands slipping on the peg which they held, knew that once
I lost my hand-grip the creature below would release my feet also and
send me hurtling down to death on the shaft's floor far below. In a
deathly silence I hung there, striving against that deadly pull, and
then felt one of my hands torn from its grip, felt the fingers of the
other slipping on the peg they held, felt my will relaxing----
Then someone had suddenly swung down past me from above, and I glanced
down to glimpse in the dim light from above Sar Than, swinging swiftly
down past me and hanging by one of his powerful limbs while with the
other three he grasped the creature below me. Instantly the latter's
grip on my feet relaxed, there was an instant of swift scuffling below
me, and then I glimpsed the shapeless body of the nebula-creature
forced from its hold on the pegs, hurtling down into the darkness to
strike the floor far below with a smacking thud. The next instant Sar
Than was up to me and was pulling me up until I again clung safely to
the pegs. Only the Arcturian, with his four strange limbs, could ever
have successfully battled the nebula-creature thus on that giddy ladder
of pegs.
But now we were again clambering up, calling on all our strength to
bear us on, watching the little circle of dim light above broadening
as we climbed up toward it. Below us, we knew, the alarm had been
given, and within a few minutes now a horde of the nebula-creatures
would be rushing up the shaft. And but minutes were left for us to act
in, so that we put every effort into a mad burst of speed that within a
few more minutes had brought us up to the shaft's mouth.
* * * * *
Jor Dahat, above us, was the first to reach its level, and I saw the
plant-man raise his head and peer cautiously forth, then beckon us
upward. Silently, stealthily, we climbed up, crept over the shaft's
edge until we crouched on the smooth metal floor. The scene about us
was the same as before, the vast, metal-walled pit, the massed machines
around us, the great cylinder at the clearing's center from which arose
the livid ray, the long shape of our battered cruiser lying beyond
it. A half-dozen of the nebula-creatures were gathered near the great
cylinder, and we saw their bodies twisting in their silent speech, but
their strange eyes were not turned in our direction.
In a moment Jor Dahat crept silently to one side, where lay a mass of
tools, and came back with three heavy, axlike implements of metal in
his grasp, long-handled and broad-bladed. Silently he handed one of
these to each of us, and then without words we crawled silently toward
the gathered nebula-creatures, on hands and knees. Inch by inch, foot
by foot, we crept toward them. I looked up, once, saw the glowing fires
of the nebula far above us, knew that within minutes those fires would
be flying out through our universe in flaming destruction unless we
could act. My grip tightened on my weapon as we crawled on through the
shadowy dusk, and then suddenly one of the creatures before us had
turned and was gazing straight toward us.
Before he could turn to his companions in warning, before he could
do more than merely glimpse us, we had sprung to our feet and were
leaping toward the creatures with upraised axes. The next moment we
were upon them, our heavy weapons flashing right and left in swift
destruction, and when we lowered them only masses of dead flesh lay
at our feet. Wildly we looked about, but there seemed no other of the
nebula-creatures on all the great pit's floor, nothing but the silent,
automatic machines, and the great cylinder of the ray. Now we leapt
toward that cylinder, then halted. A half-dozen pseudopod arms were
reaching up from the shaft up which we had come, a half-dozen of the
creatures pulling themselves up there. It was the pursuit from beneath!
Jor Dahat cried out, raced toward the shaft's mouth with the Arcturian.
"Cut the cable, Ker Kal!" he shouted. "The cable that runs into the
cylinder--Sar Than and I will hold them in the shaft!"
I saw the two of them reach the shaft's mouth just as a mass of the
nebula-creatures were emerging from it, saw their two great axes flash
down and send the shapeless beings hurtling down to death. Then I had
leapt myself to the great, foot-thick cable of black metal that ran
into the cylinder's side, carrying into it the power from all the
machines about us which generated the mighty ray. I raised my ax,
brought it down with all my force on the cable, but on the hard metal
it made only a shallow cut. Again I swung it, and again, with all my
force, while at the shaft's mouth I glimpsed the axes of my two friends
flashing in the dim light like brands of lightning, falling in swift
death upon the shapeless nebula-creatures as they sought to emerge from
the shaft. I heard the puff of jets of the deadly blue smoke leaping
upward, but knew that so long as they were held inside the shaft they
could not reach the Arcturian and the plant-man with their annihilating
jets.
Fiercely I swung my own ax down upon the black metal of the thick
cable, in one swift blow after another, severing its twisted strands
one after the other. The last minutes were speeding, I knew, and like
some soulless automaton I wielded the great ax in blow after blow,
scarcely conscious in that mad moment of anything but the thick length
of metal below me. I was half through it, now, had cut through half its
strands, and knew that another dozen of blows would sever it. And even
as hope flamed up in my brain there was a cry from Jor Dahat, I saw a
sudden resistless wave of the nebula-creatures pour up from the shaft
and force my two companions back toward me, and then they were raising
their deadly weapons to send annihilation upon us.
For a single moment the whole scene seemed as motionless as a set
tableau. Then with a wild shout I whirled the great ax high above my
head, swung it for an instant in a flashing circle, and then brought it
down with the last mad remnant of my force upon the half-severed cable
below, a powerful blow that clove through its twisted strands as a
knife might cut through cords. There was a flash of light as the cable
parted, and then the brilliance of the great cylinder's upper surface
had snapped out, and the mighty ray that sprang from it had vanished!
The next instant there was utter silence, a thick, terrific silence
in which we, and all the nebula-creatures that had crowded up onto
the pit's floor, gazed up toward the mighty nebula's fires, far above
us. Seconds, minutes, that awful silence reigned, and then I saw the
weapons of the nebula-creatures before us dropping from their grasp,
saw them rushing wildly about as though in mad, frenzied terror, heard
a great cry from Jor Dahat, beside me.
"The nebula!" he cried hoarsely, pointing up toward the glowing fires
above. "The nebula--_collapsing_!"
I looked up, dazedly, saw the vast fires moving now, slowly,
majestically, gigantically, moving down toward us, toward the nebula
world, the whole vast turning nebula collapsing into the great space
at its center with the removal of the ray that had whirled it on,
its mighty, crowding fires rushing down upon us. Then I had sunk
to the floor, felt the arms of my two friends about me, dimly felt
myself dragged across the floor through the crazily rushing hordes of
nebula-creatures into our cruiser, felt it lifting up out of the great
pit with the plant-man at the controls, as the fires above rushed down
upon us.
Then there was a thunderous roaring of titanic fires about us, a vast,
interminable rushing of colossal currents of flaming gas all around
us as we plunged upward through the collapsing nebula. More and more
dimly to my ears came that mighty roar of flame as consciousness began
to leave me, but at last, through my darkening senses, I felt that
it had ceased, that we were humming through space once more. With a
last effort I staggered to the window with my two companions, gazed
down dazedly toward the terrific ocean of boiling flame that stretched
gigantically beneath us, saw that still its fires were drawing
together, collapsing, contracting, condensing. Then suddenly up from
the collapsing nebula there leapt a single mighty tongue of fire, as
from some titanic conflagration, a vast rush of flame that towered up
toward the stars, and then dwindled and sank and died.
It was the end forever of the world within the nebula.
6
It was more than two weeks later that with all the thousands of the
great Council of Suns we passed out of the mighty tower into the
starlit night. They were still shouting, those thousands, for it was
but hours before that our battered cruiser had swung down toward the
tower out of the void of space, to meet such a reception as never
yet had been equaled in this universe. And now that the Council's
tumultuous meeting had closed at last, and each of its members made
ready to depart for his own sun, the shouting applause about us was
redoubled.
At last from out of the darkness a great star-cruiser swept toward us,
paused, and then the member from Antares had entered it and it was
speeding up into the darkness. Another drew up before us, entered by
the strange representative from Rigel, and then it too had vanished and
still others were sweeping toward us. Out of the darkness they came,
star-cruiser after star-cruiser, and into each went one of the members,
flashing out to his own star once more. One by one, we watched them
go, watched the great ships lift into the darkness, starting out to
Polaris and Fomalhaut and Algol, starting out on long journeys to suns
far out at the Galaxy's edge. One by one they went, until at last there
remained only we three of all the members, with the three cruisers
waiting before us that would carry us back to our own stars.
We paused, then, with a common impulse gazing upward. Across the
heavens gleamed the hosts of suns, points of brilliant light in a
field of deepest black. Moments we gazed up toward them, and toward
three among them that were far distant from each other across the
heavens--the magnificent golden splendor of great Capella, to the left,
and the fiery red brilliance of Arcturus, to the right, and above us
and between them a smaller star of deep yellow, that little spark of
light toward which the eyes and hearts of men shall turn until the
end of time, though they roam the limits of the universe. A moment we
gazed up, up toward the three orbs, and then Jor Dahat raised his hand,
pointing to another star low above the horizon, a great, soft-glowing
one that was like a little ball of misty light.
"Look," he said softly. "The nebula!"
Silently we gazed out toward it for a long moment, a moment in which
our thoughts leapt out across the gulf toward the glowing thing at
which we gazed, toward that mighty realm of fire where we had struggled
for our universe, in the strange world inside it which we three had
plunged to its doom. Then, silent still, we gripped hands, and turned
toward our waiting cruisers.
Then they, too, were driving up into the darkness, out from Canopus
once more into the gulf of space, into the eternal silence of the
changeless void, each toward its star.