flares, as de-cohesion rays and etheric bombs crashed and burst from
ship to ship. Weaponless our cruiser hung there, at the center of that
gigantic battle, while around us the mighty cruisers of the Galaxy and
the long black cones of the tentacle-people crashed and whirled and
flared, swooping and dipping and racing upon each other, whirling down
to the glowing world below in scores of shattered wrecks, vanishing
in silent flares of blinding light. From far away across the surface
of the luminous world beneath, the great swarms of cones drove on
toward the battle, from the shining towers of cities far away, racing
fearlessly to the attack, sinking and falling and crumbling beneath the
terrible rays of the leaping ships above, ramming and crashing with
them to the ground in sacrificial plunges. But swiftly, now, the cones
were vanishing beneath the brilliant rays.
Then Hurus Hol was at my side, shouting and pointing down toward the
glowing city below. "The condenser!" he cried, pointing to where its
blue radiance still flared on. "The dark star--look!" He flung a
hand toward the telechart, where the dark star disk was but a scant
half-inch from the shining line around our sun-circle, a tiny gap
that was swiftly closing. I glanced toward the battle that raged
around us, where the Federation cruisers were sending the cones down
to destruction by swarms, now, but unheeding of the condenser below.
A bare half-mile beneath us lay that condenser, and its cage-pillar
switch, which a single shaft of the green ray would have destroyed
instantly. And our ray-tubes were useless!
Then wild resolve flared up in my brain and I slammed down the levers
in my hands, sent our ship racing down toward the condenser and its
upheld cage like a released thunderbolt of hurtling metal. "_Hold
tight!_" I screamed as we thundered down. "_I'm going to ram the
switch!_"
And now up toward us were rushing the brilliant blue hemispheres of
the pit, the great pillar and upheld cage beside them, toward which we
flashed with the speed of lightning. _Crash!_--and a tremendous shock
shook the cruiser from stem to stern as its prow tore through the
upheld metal cage, ripping it from its supporting pillar and sending
it crashing to the ground. Our cruiser spun, hovered for a moment as
though to whirl down to destruction, then steadied, while we at the
window gazed downward, shouting.
For beneath us the blinding radiance of the massed hemispheres had
suddenly snapped out! Around and above us the great battle had died,
the last of the cones tumbling to the ground beneath the rays of the
mighty fleet, and now we turned swiftly to the telechart. Tensely we
scanned it. Upon it the great dark-star disk was creeping still toward
the line around our sun-circle, creeping slower and slower toward
it but still moving on, on, on.... Had we lost, at the last moment?
Now the black disk, hardly moving, was all but touching the shining
line, separated from it by only a hair's-breadth gap. A single moment
we watched while it hovered thus, a moment in which was settled the
destiny of a sun. And then a babel of incoherent cries came from our
lips. For the tiny gap was _widening_!
The black disk was moving back, was curving outward again from our sun
and from the Galaxy's edge, curving out once more into the blank depths
of space whence it had come, without the star it had planned to steal.
Out, out, out--and we knew, at last, that we had won.
And the mighty fleet of ships around us knew, from their own
tele-charts. They were massing around us and hanging motionless while
beneath us the palely glowing gigantic dark star swept on, out into the
darkness of trackless space until it hung like a titanic feeble moon in
the heavens before us, retreating farther and farther from the shining
stars of our Galaxy, carrying with it the glowing cities and the hordes
of the tentacle-peoples, never to return. There in the bridgeroom, with
our massed ships around us, we three watched it go, then turned back
toward our own yellow star, serene and far and benignant, that yellow
star around which swung our own eight little worlds. And then Dal Nara
flung out a hand toward it, half weeping now.
"The sun!" she cried. "The sun! The good old sun, that we fought for
and saved! _Our_ sun, till the end of time!"
6
It was on a night a week later that Dal Nara and I said farewell to
Hurus Hol, standing on the roof of that same great building on Neptune
from which we had started with our fifty cruisers weeks before. We
had learned, in that week, how the only survivor of those cruisers,
Ship 16, had managed to shake off the pursuing cones in that first
fierce attack and had sped back to the Galaxy to give the alarm, of how
the mighty Federation fleet had raced through the Galaxy from beyond
Antares in answer to that alarm, speeding out toward the approaching
dark star and reaching it just in time to save our own ship, and our
sun.
The other events of that week, the honors which had been loaded upon
us, I shall not attempt to describe. There was little in the solar
system which we three could not have had for the asking, but Hurus Hol
was content to follow the science that was his life-work, while Dal
Nara, after the manner of her sex through all the ages, sought a beauty
parlor, and I asked only to continue with our cruiser in the service
of the Federation fleet. The solar system was home to us, would always
be home to us, but never, I knew, would either of us be able to break
away from the fascination of the great fleet's interstellar patrol, the
flashing from sun to sun, the long silent hours in cosmic night and
stellar glare. We would be star-rovers, she and I, until the end.
So now, ready to rejoin the fleet, I stood on the great building's
roof, the mighty black bulk of our cruiser behind us and the stupendous
canopy of the Galaxy's glittering suns over our heads. In the streets
below, too, were other lights, brilliant flares, where thronging crowds
still celebrated the escape of their worlds. And now Hurus Hol was
speaking, more moved than ever I had seen him.
"If Nal Jak were here----" he said, and we were all silent for a
moment. Then his hand came out toward us and silently we wrung it,
turning toward the cruiser's door.
As it slammed shut behind us we were ascending to the bridgeroom, and
from there we glimpsed now the great roof dropping away beneath us as
we slanted up from it once more, the dark figure of Hurus Hol outlined
for a moment at its edge against the lights below, then vanishing. And
the world beneath us was shrinking, vanishing once more, until at last
of all the solar system behind us there was visible only the single
yellow spark that was our sun.
Then about our outward-racing cruiser was darkness, the infinite void's
eternal night--night and the unchanging, glittering hosts of wheeling,
flaming stars.