all doomed to annihilation by the gigantic comet about us that was
thundering on now irrevocably! It seemed, in that instant, that all
things in existence, the cruisers about us, the cube-ships beneath us,
the comet-creature hordes on the surface of the white-lit world below,
had paused for one moment breathless, a moment that marked a galaxy's
doom. Then suddenly Gor Han was pointing downward, eyes starting,
pointing to the comet-creature hordes on that world below, which were
suddenly rushing crazily toward the pyramid beneath us, the cube-ships
also racing wildly down toward the pyramid's summit! For on that summit
from the stair on the pyramid's side a dark, erect figure had suddenly
rushed, and before the comet-guards had glimpsed him had rushed to the
great disk-dial and pointer of the comet-control! An erect, many-limbed
dark figure who had seized the pointer in his grasp!
"_Najus Nar!_" Gor Han's great scream held within it all our renewed
faith, our sudden comprehension.
For the insect-man had grasped the pointer, the pointer that controlled
the position of the giant comet's tail, and had swung it half
around the disk from the dial's rear to its front! As he did so he
straightened, arms up-flung toward us in a last great gesture toward
the distant opening through the coma, and then the comet-guards were
upon him, the blasting crimson bolts from the darting cubes above had
reached him, annihilating the pyramid's summit, while in all the city
beneath us liquid comet-creatures and great cubes were rushing crazily
toward that pyramid, rushing too late toward the control which they had
themselves built for their comet and which now had destroyed them!
_For Najus Nar had reversed the comet-control!_
Even as the bolts had blasted the pyramid's top our cruisers had shot
with the velocity of thousands of light-speeds out from the central
world and those about it, out across the comet's heart toward the
circular opening through the coma, through that passage of crimson
death at awful speed and out into space behind the comet as the passage
closed behind us, as the tail behind the comet waned swiftly! And as
our cruisers shot up above the mighty comet, we saw that it had halted
in space, the awful momentum with which the old tail at the rear had
driven it on balanced, opposed, by the new tail shot from its front,
toward the galaxy, when Najus Nar had reversed the control! Caught
between the two cosmic pressures, between the momentum and terrific
speed with which the old tail drove it forward and the power with
which the new tail drove it backward, the mighty coma beneath us was
bulging, was spreading! Bulging outward above and below, to right
and to left, its giant crimson-glowing coma dilating and breaking up
between the terrific pressures from front and rear! Changing from a
great sphere to a gigantic shapeless crimson mass of electrical energy,
bulging out in all directions, great flashes of leaping light inside
it marking the end of the great comet-worlds caught and annihilated
inside its tortured mass! Out--out--it swelled, our cruisers hanging
far above it, watching it grow swiftly greater, _thinner_, until in
moments more where the colossal crimson comet had been was nothing but
a vast, far-flung cloud of faint electrical radiance, the concentrated
electrical energy that had been the giant comet and its worlds
dispersed out into that huge, faint-shining cloud!
The cosmic vampire that had threatened the life of our universe was
gone forever! The comet-drivers had driven their comet and its worlds,
at last, to death!
5
Sweeping in toward the galaxy's gathered suns, days later, our great
cruiser fleet slowed, halted, hung motionless outside the galaxy's edge
once more. Before us flamed great white Rigel, as it had flamed--how
long it seemed before!--when Gor Han and Jurt Tul and Najus Nar had
gathered in the control room of my cruiser, at the start of our mad
journey toward the comet. Now that comet was but a vast, faint cloud
of radiance far in the void behind us. And now, too, it was Gor Han
and Jurt Tul that stood before me, in the cruiser's silent control room.
The cruisers about us had massed into two great divisions, since here
at the galaxy's edge Gor Han and Jurt Tul were to leave me, taking
up once more their duties in the ceaseless watch of the Interstellar
Patrol, with for me my work as Chief in the headquarters at Canopus.
The frantic joy that would be shaking the galaxy's peoples to see the
shadow of doom thus lifted from them, the frantic gratitude that we
might claim--in these we had no interest now, wanting only to take up
once more the great Patrol's endless work. So now the cruisers of my
two friends hung waiting beneath my own, as we paused in silence at the
moment of parting.
Gor Han's deep voice broke the silence at last. "The end of the
journey, for us," he said. "And for Najus Nar----?"
"For Najus Nar, too," I said. "He dared and died, for the
galaxy--pretending to join the comet-creatures that he might thwart
their plans at the last--and he would have wished no other end."
Jurt Tul nodded slowly. "Najus Nar would have wished it," he said. "Yet
strange it seems, that we four of the Patrol are three, at last."
Silent we stood again, at that, and then Gor Han and Jurt Tul reached
forth, Betelgeusan and Aldebaranian and earth-man clasping hands in
a moment's grip. Then they had turned, had saluted sharply, and were
striding down through the cruiser toward their own ships, which with a
clang of metal moved away from beneath my own. Gor Han's to the right,
Jurt Tul's to the left, they moved, heading each the massed cruisers
there, and then those cruisers were moving away, to right and left
along the galaxy's edge, passing and vanishing. My single cruiser hung
alone in the void, the pilot beside me with hands on its controls,
but for a moment I paused still, gazing back through the blackness of
the great void toward a far, faint-shining cloud that glimmered in the
blackness. A long moment I gazed toward it, then turned. And then our
cruiser too was moving, in over the galaxy's edge, in toward great
Canopus through its gathered, flaming suns.