Swift as were the great cubes ahead, though, our great cruis

The COMET-DRIVERS

By EDMOND HAMILTON

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Weird Tales February 1930.

Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that

the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

"Passing Rigel on our left, sir," reported the Canopan pilot standing

in the control room beside me.

I nodded. "We'll sight the Patrol's cruisers soon, then," I told him.

"I ordered them to mass beyond Rigel, just outside the galaxy's edge."

Together we strained our eyes into the impenetrable blackness of space

that lay before us. To the left, in that blackness, there burned the

great white sun of Rigel, like a brilliant ball of diamond fire, while

to our right and behind us there flamed at a greater distance red

Betelgeuse, and blue-white Vega, and Castor's twin golden suns, all the

galaxy's gathered suns stretching in a great mass there at our backs.

Even then, though, our cruiser was flashing out over the edge of the

galaxy's great disk-like swarm of stars, and as white Rigel dropped

behind us to the left there lay before us only the vast, uncharted

deeps of outer space.

Gazing forward into those black depths our eyes could make out, faint

and inconceivably far, the few little patches of misty light that we

knew were remote galaxies of suns like the one behind us, unthinkably

distant universes like our own. In the blackness before us, too,

there shone a single great point of crimson light, burning through

the blackness of the outer void like a great red eye. It was toward

this crimson point that I and the great-headed, bodiless Canopan pilot

beside me were gazing, somberly and silently, as our cruiser hummed on.

Then as he shifted his gaze there came from him a low exclamation, and

I turned to see that a great swarm of gleaming points had appeared in

the blackness close before us, resolving as we flashed on toward them

into a far-flung, motionless swarm of long, gleaming cruisers like our

own.

Swiftly our cruiser rushed into that hanging swarm of ships, which made

way quickly before us as there flashed from our bows the signal that

marked my cruiser as that of the Chief of the Interstellar Patrol.

Then as we too slowed and hung motionless at the head of the swarm

I saw three cruisers among them flashing toward us, slanting up and

hovering just beneath our craft. There came the sharp rattle of metal

as their space-gangways rose up and connected with our cruiser, and

then the clang of our space-doors opening. A moment more and the door

of the control room was snapped suddenly aside and three strange and

dissimilar figures stepped inside, coming swiftly to attention and

saluting me.

"Gor Han! Jurt Tul! Najus Nar!" I greeted them. "You've massed a

thousand of the Patrol's cruisers here as I ordered?"

Gor Han bowed in the affirmative. A great Betelgeusan, his big

fur-covered shape was typical of the races of that big sun's cold

world: a huge barrel-like torso supported by four thick stocky limbs,

with four similar upper arms; his dark eyes and other features being

set directly into the upper part of that furry torso, which was

headless. Jurt Tul, beside him, was as strange a figure, patently of

the amphibious peoples of Aldebaran's watery worlds, his great green

bulk of shapeless body and powerful flipper-limbs almost hiding the

small bulbous head with its round and lidless eyes. And Najus Nar, who

completed the strange trio, was as dissimilar from them as from myself.

One of the powerful insect-men of Procyon, his flat, upright body, as

tall almost as my own, was dark and hard and shiny in back and of soft

white flesh in front, with a half-dozen pairs of short limbs branching

from it from bottom to top, and with a blank, faceless head from the

sides of which projected the short, flexible stalks that held in their

ends his four keen eyes. Strange enough were these three Sub-Chiefs of

the great Patrol, yet to me these three lieutenants of mine were so

familiar, in appearance, that as they faced me now their strange and

dissimilar forms made no impression on my mind.

"Your order was urgent, sir," Gor Han was saying, "that we mass a

thousand of the Patrol's cruisers here outside the galaxy's edge, and

await your coming."

"Urgent, yes," I repeated somberly, my eyes turning from them to the

great point of crimson light that shone in the black depths beyond;

"urgent because it is out from the galaxy's edge that we are going with

these cruisers, toward that point of red light there in the void that

has puzzled all the galaxy since its appearance days ago--out toward

that point of crimson light which our astronomers now have discovered

to be a gigantic comet that is racing at speed incredible straight

toward our galaxy from the depths of outer space!"

The three gazed at me, stunned, silent, and in that moment the only

sound in the control room was the low humming of the generators

beneath, which sustained our ship in space. Then, gazing out again into

the black depths ahead toward that blood-like point, I was speaking on.

"Comets there are in our galaxy, as you know, comets that revolve

in irregular orbits about various of our stars, and which have been

familiar to us always. A comet, as you know, consists of the coma or

head, the nucleus, and the tail. The coma is simply a great globe of

electrical energy, with a hollow space at its center. The nucleus is

all the comet's solid matter, a mass of meteoric and other material

hanging in the hollow at the coma's center. The great coma blows from

its own electrical energy, and is driven through space by the release

of some of that energy backward, through the vast tail, which is

simply released energy from the coma. It is the great coma that makes

a comet deadly to approach, since any matter that enters its terrific

sea of electrical energy is converted instantly into electrical energy

likewise, changed from matter-vibrations to electrical-vibrations,

annihilated. Our interstellar navigators have for that reason always

avoided the comets of our galaxy, while never has it been dreamed that

a comet might exist in empty space outside our galaxy.

"Now, however, our astronomers have found that this crimson spot of

light that has appeared in the outer void and has puzzled us for days

is in reality a giant crimson comet of size and speed unthinkable,

which is racing straight toward our galaxy and will reach it within

a few more weeks. _And when it does reach it, it means the galaxy's

doom!_ For this gigantic comet, greater by far than any of the galaxy's

greatest suns, will crash through the galaxy's swarm of stars like a

meteor through a swarm of fireflies, annihilating those in its path by

absorbing them and their worlds into the terrific electrical energy of

its mighty coma; disrupting all the finely balanced celestial mechanism

of our universe and sucking its whirling stars into its deadly

self as it smashes on; engulfing our suns and worlds in electrical

annihilation, and then racing on into the void, leaving behind it but

the drifting fragments of our wrecked and riven universe!

"Onward toward our universe this mighty comet is thundering, and but

one chance remains for us to turn it aside. The center of this comet,

of any comet, is the nucleus at the heart of its coma, which is the

only solid matter in it. If we could penetrate through the coma to

the great hollow inside it, could turn upon that nucleus the powerful

force-beams used by our Patrol cruisers to sweep up meteor-swarms, we

could possibly push it aside enough to change its course, to send it

past our galaxy's edge instead of through it. But that must be done

soon! Our astronomers have calculated that within twelve more days the

comet will have reached a point so near the galaxy that it will be

too late for anything ever to turn it aside. When the Council of Suns

informed me of this I flashed word immediately for you three Sub-Chiefs

to mass swiftly a thousand of the Patrol's cruisers here outside the

galaxy's edge. And with these thousand ships we are starting at once

toward the comet!

"Behind us the Patrol will be massing another five thousand cruisers to

send out after us, but these can hardly reach the comet before it is

too late. It is on us, and on our thousand cruisers, that the galaxy's

fate now hangs. If we can reach the great oncoming comet, can penetrate

through its deadly coma to the solid nucleus at its center, can deflect

that nucleus with our force-beams before the twelfth day ends, we will

have turned the great comet aside, will have saved the galaxy itself

from death. If we can not, the galaxy perishes and we perish with it.

For we of the Interstellar Patrol, who have defended and guarded the

ways of that galaxy for thousands upon tens of thousands of years, go

out to the oncoming comet now not to return unless we can turn that

comet aside and save our universe from doom!"

Again in the control room was silence when I had finished, a silence

that seemed intensified, as the three strange Sub-Chiefs before me held

my eyes. Then, without speaking, they calmly saluted once more, eyes

alight. Impulsively I reached hands out toward them, grasped their own.

Then they had turned, were striding swiftly out of the control room and

through the passages beyond down to the space-doors, and through the

closed space-gangways to their own three cruisers. As our space-doors

clanged shut once more, the gangways of those cruisers folded down upon

them, and then the three craft had smoothly moved back to take up a

position just behind my own.

I turned to the round opening of the speech-instrument beside me,

spoke a brief order into it, and in answer to that order the thousand

cruisers behind us smoothly and quickly massed into space-squadron

formation, a long slender wedge with my own cruiser at the apex and

those of the three Sub-Chiefs just behind me. Another brief order and

the Canopan pilot beside me was opening the controls, our cruiser

and the great triangle of massed cruisers behind us moving smoothly

forward toward the crimson-gleaming point in the blackness ahead, our

generators throbbing louder and louder as we slipped forward at swiftly

mounting speed. We were on our way toward the great comet, and our

struggle for the life of our universe had begun!

* * * * *

The voice of Gor Han came clearly from the speech-instrument as I

stepped into the control room, days later. "Comet dead ahead, sir," he

announced.

But my own eyes were already on the scene ahead. "Yes," I told him,

"another hour will bring us to the coma's edge."

For before us now, bulking crimson and mighty and monstrous in the

heavens ahead, glowed the giant comet toward which for the last nine

days our thousand ships had been flashing. On and on we had rushed

toward it at unnumbered light-speeds, through the vast ether-currents

that raged here in space outside the galaxy, past regions of strange

and deadly force which we but glimpsed and which we gave a wide berth,

on into the endless outer void until our galaxy had shrunk to a small

swarm of blinking light-points in the darkness behind us. Almost,

in those days, we had forgotten the existence of that galaxy, so

centered was our attention upon the sinister crimson glory of the comet

ahead. Through those days it had largened swiftly to our eyes, from a

light-point to a small red disk, and then to a larger disk, and finally

to the gigantic circle of crimson-glowing light that loomed before us

now, and toward which I and the three Sub-Chiefs in the cruisers just

behind my own now gazed.

Tremendous as it was, the great comet's light was not dazzling to our

eyes, being a deep crimson, a dusky, lurid red, and gazing forward I

could make out its general features. The spherical coma was what lay

full before us, a gigantic ball of crimson-glowing electrical energy

that I knew, as in all comets, was hollow, holding in the space inside

it the solid matter of the nucleus. Behind it, too, I could glimpse the

vast faint-glowing tail streaming outward behind the onrushing coma.

The light of that tail, I knew, was but faint electrical energy shot

back from the terrific coma and propelling that coma forward through

space like a great rocket streaming fire behind it. The small comets

of our own galaxy, I knew, moved in fixed though irregular orbits

about our stars, and thus would often move about a star or sun in the

opposite direction to that in which their tail was pushing them, simply

because even the impetus of the tail could not make them leave their

fixed orbits. This giant comet of outer space, though, I knew, moved

in no orbit whatever through the empty immensities of the outer void,

and so would always race through space in a direction opposite to that

of its tail, the energy of the mighty coma shot forth in the tail like

the powder of a great rocket, propelling it irresistibly forward with

terrific momentum and force.

The glowing coma seemed countless millions of miles across, the still

vaster tail behind appearing to extend limitlessly backward into the

void. Gazing toward it, with something of awe, I was silent for a time,

then turned to the speech-instrument. "We'll slant our ships up over

the coma," I ordered, "and reconnoiter it for an opening."

Our massed cruisers shot steeply upward at the order, but as they did

so the voice of Jurt Tul came doubtfully from the opening before me.

"You think we can find an opening through which we can penetrate inside

the coma?" he asked.

"We'll have to," I told him. "We've only a few score hours left to get

inside and bring our force-beams to bear on the nucleus."

The Aldebaranian's voice came slowly in answer. "That coma," he said;

"it seems impossible that we can ever get inside it----"

There was silence as I gazed ahead toward the great comet, whose coma

was now indeed a terrific spectacle. An immense lurid sea of crimson

light, it seemed to fill all the universe, shifting slowly downward and

beneath us as our thousand cruisers hummed up at a steep slant over it.

We were racing toward it at a full million miles above its level, the

rim of the huge sphere of crimson light creeping across the black void

beneath us as comet and cruisers rushed closer to each other. Gazing

down toward the great coma, its lurid crimson light drenching all in

the control room, I heard startled exclamations beneath as even the

imperturbable members of my cruiser's cosmopolitan crew were awed by

the comet's magnitude and terror. Then, when the titanic crimson sphere

of the coma seemed squarely beneath our rushing ships, I uttered a word

into the instrument before me, and immediately our cruiser and the

thousand behind it had halted, had turned squarely about, and then at

reduced speed were racing along at the same speed as the comet, hanging

above it and accompanying it on its mad rush through the void toward

our galaxy.

Below us now lay the giant red-glowing globe of the coma, racing on

toward the far swarm of light-points that was our galaxy. And now,

gazing intently down into its far-flung glowing mass, I strained my

eyes for sight of some opening, some crevice in that mighty body of

glowing electrical energy that would permit us to penetrate to the

space inside it. Yet no such opening could be seen, no tiniest break

in the coma's lurid sphere. A single, unbroken and gigantic globe of

crimson luminescence, it hung beneath us, as we rushed through the

void, the vast fan-tail of faintest crimson light streaming out behind.

Through all our days of tense flight outward toward the comet I had

hoped against hope that in its coma would be some break or opening,

however small, that would permit us to penetrate inside, but now my

last hope, and the galaxy's last hope, was shattered by the glowing,

unbroken mass of this gigantic comet's coma. With sinking heart I gazed

down toward it as our triangle of ships sped on above it.

Gor Han's deep voice sounded from the instrument before me. "There

seems no opening in the coma at all, Khel Ken," he said. "And it

is instant annihilation for anything to venture into that coma's

electrical energy!"

"We'll have to drop lower and cruise about the coma's surface," I told

the Betelgeusan. "We _must_ get inside, somehow!"

With the words our cruiser began to sink smoothly downward, still

holding its forward flight above the comet, the massed ships behind

following steadily in our course. Down--down--by thousands of miles

a moment we sank, down until the giant coma beneath seemed the only

thing in all the universe, glowing from horizon to horizon like an

awful aurora of crimson death. An inconceivably colossal sea of lurid

electrical energy, a giant deadly sphere of glowing force which it were

annihilation for anything to touch, it stretched beneath us, broadening

still as we came closer toward it. Down--down----

A cry from Najus Nar sounded beside me. "Those cubes!" the insect-man

was shouting. "Racing ahead of the comet there!"

Swiftly I gazed down toward the foremost rim of the great, onrushing

coma, and saw what he had seen. Racing along a few thousand miles in

front of the comet, separated from each other by great spaces, there

sped score upon score of mighty metal cubes, glinting in the coma's

lurid light! Distant as they were, I could glimpse them clearly through

our telescopic windows, extending in a great chain or line around the

comet's head, and rushing before it through the deeps of space. And

there were openings in the sides of these speeding cubes, transparent

openings from which gushed pure white light! For they were ships!

Colossal cube-ships flashing on with the great comet on its thundering

rush toward our universe!

"Cube-ships!" It was Gor Han's shout that echoed my thought.

"Cube-ships!" Najus Nar too was crying. "Scouting before the comet!"

"And that means that these cube-ships are from the comet's heart!" I

cried excitedly; "from its----"

My exclamation had been cut short by simultaneous sharp cries from Gor

Han and Jurt Tul.

"The cubes have seen us!" they shouted. "They're coming up toward us!"

For there, far below us, the great chain of mighty cube-ships had

suddenly condensed, shortened, and they had all, a hundred or more in

number, massed swiftly together as though in answer to some sudden

alarm and were driving up toward us! At velocity incredible they shot

up toward us, while we gazed stunned; then as they flashed nearer there

flashed up from the foremost of them a long, slender shaft of crimson

light like that of the comet below, a terrific bolt of electrical

energy like that of the coma beneath, which struck one of our cruisers

squarely and instantly annihilated it. And as we gazed stupefied toward

it in that dazing moment, from the upleaping cubes beneath score upon

score of other crimson deadly bolts were stabbing up toward us!

2

"Battle formation!"

Even as the deadly crimson bolts had shot up from the cubes toward us

I had yelled the order into the instrument before me, and it was all

that saved us from disaster in that moment, since in the split-second

before the glowing bolts could reach us our cruisers had shifted

their formation suddenly, only a score of them being struck by those

glowing shafts. In that moment our cruisers had shifted into three long

parallel lines, and then, as the massed cubes beneath flashed ever

upward toward us, their glowing bolts blasting our cruisers, I had

shouted another order into the speech-instrument above the great din

beneath.

"The force-beams!" I cried. "Turn them on these cube-ships--push them

down into the coma!"

There came a deep shout from Gor Han at the order, and from Jurt Tul's

ship there issued through my instrument the amphibian's cool laugh.

The next instant there were shooting downward from all our cruisers

the great force-beams, broad beams, not of light but of darkness, of

utter blackness and absence of light, of great force that was invisible

itself but whose terrific power drove even the light-vibrations from

its path and so made the force-beams seem beams of utter blackness.

Down toward the uprushing cube-ships the black force-beams stabbed,

and as they smote among those cubes those that were struck by them

were driven suddenly downward with inconceivable power. Down, down,

struggling vainly against the irresistible force-beams that pushed

them, down, down until in a moment more those struck had been driven

into the crimson sphere of the mighty coma beneath, vanishing in its

immense lurid sea and there meeting annihilation instantly in spurts of

leaping light!

Thus a full score of the hundred cube-ships below had been forced

down to death in the comet in a single moment, but the rest were

still leaping toward us and before we could loose more of the deadly

force-beams they were just beneath us, among us, their crimson bolts

blasting lightning-like about them, leaping from cube to cruiser. High

above the titanic thundering comet, like flies above a sun, cubes and

cruisers whirled and struck and ran, with crimson bolts and black

force-beams stabbing thick through the void about us. I heard the

shouts of Gor Han and Jurt Tul and Najus Nar from the instrument before

me, screamed my orders into its opening as my own cruiser soared

through the wild mêlée with black beams whirling. I glimpsed one of the

cubes rocketing toward us, looming in an instant to immense size, a

colossal metal cube thousands of feet square, through the transparent

sections of which I could glimpse for a split-second the white-lit

interior, a mass of intricate mechanisms among which clung the beings

who manned it, black, shapeless masses that I but half glimpsed in that

mad moment. Then from the cube's great side a glowing red bolt shot

toward us, but a moment too late, since by then our cruiser had shot

upward and our black force-beam had smote down upon the cube-ship to

drive it into the glowing sea of death below!

About us, too, all our cruisers were speeding upward, in answer to my

orders, and before the cubes could check our maneuver we were over

them, all our dark force-beams smiting from above. Struck by those

beams, all but a scant half-dozen of the remaining cubes drove down

to doom in the coma's fiery sea, before they could rise to our level

to resume the battle. The half-dozen left seemed to hover motionless

a moment, then turned and sped away from us, back over the coma's

crimson-glowing sphere toward the great tail of the comet, streaming

out behind!

"We've beaten them!" Gor Han was bellowing. "They're trying to get

away----"

"After them!" I yelled into the speech-instrument. "They're trying to

get back inside the coma--they must have some way of getting inside!"

But my order had been unnecessary, for even as the half-dozen great

cubes flashed away, our cruisers, still some eight hundred in number,

had turned and were racing after them like unleashed hounds after

their prey. Downward and backward we raced after them, low across

the glowing surface of the great comet, over the deadly coma to where

the faint, vast tail issued from it. Ahead we could see the six

cubes fleeing onward, at a speed equal to our own, and the sight of

them caused us to open to the last notch the power of our throbbing

generators for that wild pursuit. Within moments, at that tremendous

speed, there came into view ahead the rear rim of the coma's colossal

glowing sphere, with the fainter glow that marked the currents of the

great tail streaming back from the rim into the void of space.

Swift as were the great cubes ahead, though, our great cruisers of the

Interstellar Patrol, speediest of all the galaxy's ships, were proving

now to be swifter, since slowly, steadily, we had begun to overhaul

those fleeing shapes. I heard Gor Han's deep voice, excited as always

in battle, from the speech-instruments, heard Jurt Tul's calm comments

as we drove nearer the flying cubes, heard Najus Nar's eager cries.

The cubes were passing out now from over the great coma, on over the

vast tail, to my puzzlement. I had thought they were striving to gain

the interior of the comet, but instead they were racing away from it,

while with every moment we were drawing nearer to them. Then, just when

it seemed that another moment's flight would bring us upon them, they

halted abruptly in space, hovering above the faint, vast-streaming

tail, and then plunged straight down into the mighty currents of the

tail, and were moving back, _inside_ that tail, toward the great coma

behind us!

"The tail!" cried Najus Nar. "They're going up the tail itself and into

the coma's heart!"

But I too had seen and had understood all in that moment, had

understood what I had not dreamed before, that the only opening through

the great coma to the hollow at its heart lay at the coma's rear, and

could be reached only by struggling up to it through the awful currents

of the tail! These mighty cubes, I saw, had been constructed in that

shape especially to resist and endure those terrible, back-sweeping

ether-currents set up by the comet's rush through the void,

terrific currents glowing with the electrical energy shot backward

and dissipated in driving the comet on. The cubes thus specially

constructed could brave those colossal currents where weaker craft

would be battered to fragments. All this I understood and weighed, in

that tense moment, and then had made decision and was shouting back

into the instrument before me.

"Down with our ships, too, then!" I cried. "_We're going up the tail

after them!_"

I heard an exclamation from Gor Han, an answering shout from Najus

Nar, and then my cruiser and all the cruisers behind us were dipping

steeply downward, plunging into the vast and faint-glowing tail! The

next moment was one of blind, utter confusion, for as we plunged into

the terrific currents our cruisers were whirled up and backward as

though by gigantic hands, thrown helplessly like leaves in a terrific

wind, cruiser smashing against cruiser and destroying each other there

by dozens in that wild moment. Then as the pilot beside me clung to

the controls, bringing its bows around to face those mighty currents,

heading toward the coma, our ship steadied, while those about it

steadied likewise. We had lost half a hundred ships in that first

terrific plunge, but neither my own nor those of the three Sub-Chiefs

had been injured, and now we were moving slowly up the great currents

of the tail toward the coma. The tail about us was to the eyes but a

great region of faint light, but far ahead of us there glowed like

a crimson wall of light across the heavens the mighty coma, and

against it we could make out the dark square shapes of the cube-ships

we pursued, likewise fighting their way toward the coma through those

terrific currents.

* * * * *

I think now that the moments which followed, as we struggled in pursuit

of those cubes, were almost the most terrible I ever experienced,

moments in which it seemed impossible that our ships could breast such

awful currents and live. About us the currents roared deafeningly,

thrilling through every portion of our ships, sweeping against us with

titanic power. On and on we struggled, veering to take advantage of

weaker currents, blundering into great maelstroms, swaying, plunging,

fighting on, with the coma's glowing wall looming ever closer ahead.

I heard Gor Han's anxious comments from the instrument before me,

glimpsed cruisers here and there behind my own collapsing and sweeping

backward, knew that not for long could we fight against those currents

and live.

The coma was very near, now, a giant wall of crimson light across the

heavens, and now I made out a dark circle within that glowing wall, a

circular opening rapidly largening to our eyes and toward which the

flying cubes ahead were struggling.

"The opening!" Gor Han was shouting, his voice coming to me even above

the awful din of the currents about us.

"Straight toward it after those cubes!" I cried. "Our ships can't stand

this much longer!"

Now ahead I could see the cube-ships we pursued struggling toward

that opening slower and slower, fighting the currents which were most

powerful here where they issued from the mighty coma ahead. A moment

more, though, and they had reached it, and vanished inside, while we

in turn were fighting through the titanic sweep of those currents

toward it. On--on--the currents that raged against us had become

awful in strength, seeming to clutch at us with supreme power at this

last moment. The opening loomed larger ahead, now, a dark circular

passageway remaining miraculously open and unchanged through that

electrical sea whose deadly crimson mass formed its walls. On--on--it

seemed that never could we reach it, so terribly did the currents sweep

about us. Yard by yard, foot by foot, we crept forward toward it, were

on its brink, seemed to hesitate there for an instant before being

swept backward and away, and then with a supreme last effort of our

throbbing generators we crept forward out of the grip of those gigantic

currents and into the open passageway!

Now all about us there raged the glowing electrical sea of the colossal

coma, into the deadly mass of which the passage led, a straight passage

which I knew could only be artificially made and maintained. Far ahead

in that light-walled passage we could glimpse the dark shapes of the

cubes, fleeing still before us, and now with humming generators our

cruisers leapt forward, through that tunnel of the deadly coma! Above,

below, on each side, there raged the coma's electrical sea, which it

were annihilation to touch, and the circular passage down which we fled

was hardly wide enough to admit three of our ships abreast, yet down

it at reckless speed we sped, all thought leaving us now save the wild

excitement of the pursuit.

Crimson light from the hell of glowing death that raged all about

us beat blood-like upon us as we drove on, yet the cries of Gor Han

and Najus Nar and even the cool Jurt Tul mingled with my own from

the speech-instrument, as we shot forward in pursuit of the fleeing

cubes. Never, surely, was pursuit stranger than that one, the galaxy's

hundreds of cruisers, manned by every dissimilar shape to be found

upon its myriad worlds, leaping forward in the narrow opening that

led through a comet's deadly mass into its unglimpsed heart, after

the strange cube-craft that fled on before us. A single slip of the

controls for a fraction of an inch was enough to send any cruiser into

the incandescent walls to death, and indeed I glimpsed cruisers among

those that followed me blundering into those walls in our wild flight

onward and vanishing in wild spurts of light!

Yet on and on we leapt, and shouted now as we saw the cubes ahead

shooting out from the passageway into open space beyond. A moment more

and we were on their tracks, were flashing out too from the encircling

crimson walls of glowing death, that vanished suddenly from about

us as we entered into a vast region of open space, the immense open

space that lay at the giant comet's heart! Far, far away from us there

stretched the walls of the gigantic coma that encompassed this open

space, above and below, enclosing all that space within their deadly

electrical sea. This, though, we had expected and it was not this that

held our attention in that stunning moment. It was the comet's nucleus,

hanging at the center of that space. For that nucleus was a mass of

smoothly revolving worlds!

Worlds! Worlds there at the comet's heart, worlds that were disk-shaped

instead of spherical, a dozen or more of which revolved in a great

ring about a single world that was larger than any of the others, and

that hung motionless! Over those revolving worlds, down toward that

central disk-world the cube-ships ahead of us were fleeing, and as we

shot down after them I saw that it and the rim of other disks, though

not illuminated by the dusky crimson glow of the encompassing comet,

were bathed in light, pure white light that seemed to emanate from

themselves! And as we rushed down toward the surface of that central

world I glimpsed upon it smooth dark ways and streets, on each side

of which were what seemed great, smooth-sided shallow pits; glimpsed

multitudes of dark, shapeless figures that moved to and fro along

those streets and ways, tending great mechanisms set up in masses

here and there along them; glimpsed a single great circular plaza or

smooth-floored clearing set amid those streets and pits and massed

mechanisms, at the center of which loomed a great, truncated dark

pyramid upon whose flat summit rested some big disk-shaped mechanism.

Then in that same flashing glimpse I saw that which drove all else from

my mind, saw from the surface of all this mighty world a tremendous

swarm of great cube-ships that was driving up toward the ships we

pursued, and toward ourselves!

"Cube-ships!" Gor Han was crying. "Cube-ships in thousands, and they're

attacking us!"

"Back!" I cried. "Back up and outward! We have no chance against these

thousands!"

But before our cruisers could turn, before we could halt and slant back

upward, the thousands of leaping cubes from beneath were upon us! Then

about us for a wild moment was conflict indescribable, colossal cubes

rushing by thousands upon our hundreds of gleaming cruisers, crimson

electrical bolts and black force-beams whirling and stabbing in wild

destruction. Cubes thronged thick about us as our cruiser leapt upward,

and then the thrumming of the force-beams of our ship sounded as they

drove paths of instant devastation through the ruck of battle about us.

From the speech-instrument there came above the din of battle a wild

cry from Gor Han, and I saw that a crimson bolt had grazed past his

cruiser's stern, warping its whole side with its terrific power and

sending his craft swirling helplessly down to the world below! I cried

out at that sight, then saw Najus Nar's craft slant downward even as

my own struggled wildly with the cubes about it, saw the insect-man's

cruiser drive right and left with force-beams, as other cubes from

beneath rushed up toward it. Then as it shot downward among them to

reach Gor Han's falling ship it had crashed glancingly along the side

of one of the uprushing cubes, and with its prow a twisted wreck of

metal was whirling down also!

"Gor Han! Najus Nar!" I shouted, as I saw them fall; then a deadly

bolt of blinding crimson fire flashed past our cruiser's walls,

missing us only by inches; I yelled crazily as the cube above that had

loosed it was driven smashingly into the battle whirl about us by our

swift-leaping force-beam. But about us now our cruisers were swiftly

vanishing, as the hordes of cube-ships rushed upon them! They were

stabbing out with black beams to the bitter end, driving cubes down

to death with those beams, yet they were fast disappearing beneath

the withering hail of deadly crimson electrical bolts. But a score of

cruisers remained beside me, now but a dozen, as the crimson bolts

still flashed thick, Jurt Tul's ship fighting side by side with my own.

Then, as but a scant five or six cruisers remained, the target of all

the blasting bolts from the massed cubes about us, there penetrated

through the deafening roar of battle from the speech-instrument Jurt

Tul's great voice.

"Back out of the comet!" he yelled. "It's our only chance, Khel Ken--to

get outside until the rest of the Patrol's cruisers arrive!"

I saw, even through my mad blood-lust at that moment, that he was right

and that our only chance of further action lay in winning clear of the

comet. "Back, then!" I cried.

With the words our half-dozen cruisers zoomed upward and outward at

such tremendous velocity that the deadly bolts from the thousands of

cubes beneath fell short of us in our wild upward rush. Up--up--upward

from that great central world we shot, and outward. The cube-ships

beneath, taken by surprize for the moment, then massed also and leapt

up after us. And now, a scant six cruisers remaining of all the

thousands that had been our force a few minutes before, we raced out

from that central world, toward the darker circle in the distant coma's

wall that was the one passage to outside space. Out over the ring of

revolving disk-worlds we shot, out toward that opening, out----

But what was that? That swarm of tiny, square shapes, of gleaming

little cube-shapes, which even at that distance we could see had darted

suddenly from one side across the dark circle of the single opening?

Close-massed in a compact swarm, they had shot out from the side to

halt _across_ that opening, hanging motionless there. Cube-ships,

hundreds in number, that had flashed toward that opening from one side,

to hang motionless there across it, while behind us there raced after

us in deadly pursuit the other cube-ship thousands! Cube-ships that

hung motionless, ready, across that round opening through the great

coma, and at sight of which I cried aloud once more.

"They've cut us off--they're ahead of us!" I cried. "_They've barred

the one way to outside space and we're trapped here at the comet's

heart!_"

3

The moment that followed, as our ships slowed and hung motionless, with

doom ahead and doom behind, was one in which the death that we had

dared a score of times since reaching the comet loomed full before us.

The cube-ships that barred the way ahead, the thousands racing toward

us from behind--these were like death's great jaws closing upon us,

and for an instant I felt myself surrendering to utter despair. But

then, as my eyes dropped downward, toward the ring of outer smaller

disk-worlds over which we had been flashing and above which we now

hung, a flicker of hope shot through me and I turned swiftly to the

speech-instrument.

"Down to those worlds below!" I cried. "There's a chance that we can

hide on one of them until we can get out of the comet!"

Instantly, spurred to greater swiftness by our desperate situation,

our half-dozen cruisers were slanting sharply down toward one of those

revolving disk-worlds. The surface of that world leapt up with terrific

speed toward us as we shot recklessly downward, and I sighted cities

of pits and streets and mechanisms like that of the central world upon

it, cities though that did not cover all its surface as in the central

world, but were scattered about it, the rest of the disk-world's

surface being a tumbled mass of mighty mountains and chasmed valleys,

all of barren dark rock. It was down toward one of these tremendous

chasms, near the disk-world's outer edge, that we were heading, every

feature of that world's surface lying plain beneath us in the strange

white light that bathed all these revolving worlds. Downward into that

awful chasm our cruisers shot, and as they did so I glimpsed, high

above, a swarm of tiny dark cube-shapes that had halted their pursuit

of us, were circling about and dropping lower as though to discover our

whereabouts!

Our lives depended on finding some place of hiding in this

tremendous-walled chasm, I knew, and as we arrowed down into its

depths, white-lit by the same strange illumination, I gazed swiftly

about for some place of concealment. A moment the search seemed

hopeless, there being nothing but the chasm's narrow floor of barren

rock, its towering jagged rock sides, and then as we shot along its

length I sighted a great crack or crevice in one of them, a long,

crack-like opening that was large enough to admit our cruisers, and

behind which could be glimpsed the dark depths of some great cavernous

hollow in the rock.

"Through that crack!" I ordered swiftly, saw Jurt Tul's cruiser move

quickly toward it, scraping against the crack's jagged edges as it

pushed through into the dark cavern behind. Another of our cruisers

followed, and then the rest, one by one, until my own was scraping

inside, just as I saw the cube-ships high above dropping toward us,

splitting into divisions of a dozen ships each which were slanting down

over all the surface of this world in search of us, one of them heading

straight toward the great chasm!

As it slanted down toward us I gazed about me, saw that our six

cruisers were hanging in a dark, cavernous abyss that seemed to extend

far down into the depths of this disk-world. A rocky shelf just inside

the crack-opening, though, seemed large enough for us to rest our

ships upon; so instantly we brought them to rest there, cutting off

the generators whose humming might betray us. Then, as our space-doors

opened with a slight inward hiss from the higher-pressure air of the

disk's atmosphere, I stepped quickly out, found Jurt Tul and the other

cruiser captains beside me, and then we had all suddenly crouched down

inside the great crack's edge as a score of the great cube-ships shot

down into the white-lit chasm outside.

Peering out from the cavern's dark depths we saw those cubes hanging

there, then moving slowly along the chasm's length as though in

search of us. Down its length they disappeared and we breathed

easier for a moment; then they reappeared, coming to rest on the

chasm's floor directly beneath the opening in which we crouched,

scarce a half-hundred feet below us. Tensely we watched, saw that

doors were opening in those cubes' sides, creatures emerging, the

comet-creatures of these strange worlds. And at sight of those

creatures even our tense situation could not suppress our gasps. For

they were--liquid-creatures! Creatures whose bodies were liquid instead

of solid, creatures that were each but a pool of thick black liquid,

flowing viscously about, in each of which pools floated two round,

white blank disks, great white pupilless eyes.

We saw them flowing forth from out their cubes, saw some whose viscous

bodies held what seemed tools or weapons, saw the floating eyes turned

this way and that about the chasm, as though in search of us. Then a

score of the strange creatures did an incomprehensible thing: they

flowed together into a single liquid mass, a great black pool in which

floated all their eyes, their liquid bodies mingling together! A moment

they remained thus, then had separated, each from the others, and were

returning to their cubes.

"Conversing!" whispered Jurt Tul beside me. "It's their method of

conversing, of exchanging thoughts--to mingle their liquid bodies one

with another!"

I knew the amphibian was right, and shuddered involuntarily at the

thing we had seen. The cubes' doors had closed now, and the cubes were

lifting upward from the chasm's floor. One, more suspicious apparently

than the rest, hovered a moment outside the crack within which we

crouched, and we shrank back, suddenly tense, but after a moment's

inspection it too had driven up after the others, which passed from

sight high above, searching slowly across the disk-world's surface in a

strange formation as though following some discussed plan. We breathed

easier, then, standing erect, and I turned quickly to Jurt Tul.

"Our only chance is to get out of the comet and wait for the five

thousand Patrol cruisers that were to come after us," I told him. "But

we can't leave the comet with Gor Han and Najus Nar prisoned in it!"

The great amphibian shook his head. "We could venture back to the

comet-city on the central world to attempt to find them," he said, "but

in this brilliant white light we'd be seen and destroyed at once."

I was silent, for I knew that it was so, and broodingly I considered

that light, whose white illumination filled all the great chasm

outside, beating faintly even into the cavern, yet seeming to have no

visible source whatever. And then, even as I gazed upon it, that light

died! It seemed to gray, to darken, and then had vanished altogether,

within a moment, while at the same moment there beat faintly through

the air from far away a great clanging note like that of a giant gong.

The chasm outside, the world and worlds about us, lay now in dusk,

their only illumination the lurid, dark crimson light of the comet's

glowing coma, a red disk that gave to the barren rocky world about us

an inconceivably weird appearance.

"That gong!" Jurt Tul was saying. "You heard it? It sounded when the

light died--it means that these comet-creatures maintain and regulate

their own day and night!"

"That white light," I said; "you mean that it's made by them, turned

off for their night?"

He nodded quickly. "It must be. They can use the coma's great

electrical energy to produce that light at will, just as they use that

energy for their crimson bolts. They must turn it off and on at regular

intervals, to produce their day and night, their activity-periods and

rest-periods."

"But then we can venture back to the comet-city--back to the central

world for Gor Han and Najus Nar!" I exclaimed, and he nodded.

"Yes, but we'd best wait longer, since now the cube-ships' search will

be going on, even in this dusk, and we'd have small chance of escaping

them."

* * * * *

For all my impatience I saw the wisdom of Jurt Tul's suggestion and

so composed myself to a longer period of waiting. So hour followed

hour while we crouched there in the great crack in the chasm's wall.

Far above we could see the crimson coma, against which there came and

went now and then divisions of cube-ships, still searching, searching

for the fugitives who had escaped them. My thoughts turned to Gor

Han and to Najus Nar, prisoned in the comet-city, and then to our

own predicament. But hours remained now in which the comet might be

turned aside, and unless we could escape from it, could meet the five

thousand cruisers that were racing toward it from the galaxy and lead

them inside, no power in all space and time could turn the comet aside

from the galaxy. And I could not, would not, attempt to escape from the

comet without having first learned the fate, at least, of Gor Han and

Najus Nar.

At last I stood upright, turned to Jurt Tul. "The cube-ships above seem

to have slackened their search," I told him, "and now's the time for

our venture. We've had hours now of this dusk, and the light of their

day may be turned on at any time."

He nodded, then pointed out that his cruiser had been damaged somewhat

in the battle over the central world. So that it might not delay us we

transferred his crew from it to the others, Jurt Tul entering my own

cruiser with me, while the damaged one we left there on the cavern's

shelf. Then, after we had closed our space-doors, our cruisers moved

gently out of the narrow opening, rising swiftly up over the disk-world

from the chasm's depths. That disk-world's surface lay beneath us, now,

illumined by the coma's far crimson glow alone, a lurid luminescence

that picked out streaks and veins of metal here and there in the jagged

rock. It was plain, indeed, that these worlds were meteoric in nature,

and had been formed and set spinning in this orderly fashion by the

comet-creatures themselves.

For the time, though, we heeded not these things, intent on the scene

ahead as our five cruisers shot silently through the lurid dusk toward

the central world. Far away, now and then, against the coma's baleful

glow, we caught sight of cube-ships moving still restlessly about

in search of us, and once a party of these seemed to take up our

course, to follow us. These, though, veered away in the dusk behind

us, and then in a moment more we had passed above that ring of outer

disk-worlds, and Jurt Tul and I, gazing forward from the control room,

could make out the great, motionless mass of the central world beneath

us, the world that was our goal. No light gleamed upon its darkened

surface, lying in a weird picture there in the coma's crimson dusk. As

we shot down toward it I saw vaguely in that dusk the great, massed

machines here and there, the smooth streets, the enigmatic pits about

them, and then the great clearing at the flat world's center.

"That clearing!" I whispered to Jurt Tul. "It was near it that Gor

Han's and Najus Nar's ships fell--we'll land near it."