By Edmond Hamilton

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Weird Tales July, August, September, October 1929.

Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that

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

[Illustration: "Around we swept in one great lightning curve, and then

were rushing straight back upon the three racing ships."]

_1. The Swarm From Space_

The floor beneath me, slanting swiftly downward, flung me across the

room and against its metal wall as our whole ship suddenly spun crazily

in mid-space. For the moment following I had only a swift vision of

walls and floor and ceiling gyrating insanely about me while I clutched

in vain for some hold upon them, and at the same moment I glimpsed

through the window the other ships of my little squadron plunging

helplessly about behind us. Then as our craft's wild whirling slackened

I stumbled to my feet, out of the room and up the narrow stair outside

it, bursting into the transparent-walled little pilot room where my two

strange lieutenants stood at the ship's controls.

"Korus Kan! Jhul Din!" I exclaimed. "Are you trying to wreck us all?"

The two turned toward me, saluting. Korus Kan, of Antares, was of the

metal-bodied races of that star's countless worlds, his brain and heart

and nervous system and vital organs encased in an upright body of

gleaming metal whose powerful triple arms and triple legs were immune

from all fatigue, and from whose ball-like upper brain-chamber or head

his triangle of three keen eyes looked forth. Jhul Din, too, was as

patently of Spica, of the crustacean peoples of that sun's planets,

with his big, erect body armored in hard black shell, his two mighty

upper arms and two lower legs short and thick and stiff, while from

his shiny black conical head protruded his twin round eyes. Drawn as

the members of our crews were, from every peopled star in the galaxy,

there were yet no stranger or more dissimilar shapes among them than

these two, who confronted me for a moment now in silence before Korus

Kan made answer.

"Sorry, sir," he said; "it was another uncharted ether-current."

"Another!" I repeated, and they nodded.

"This squadron is supposed to have the easiest section of the whole

Interstellar Patrol, out here along the galaxy's edge," said Jhul

Din, "but we're no sooner clear of one cursed current than we're into

another."

"Well, currents or no currents, we'll have to hold our course," I

told them. "The Patrol has to be kept up, even out here." And as

Korus Kan's hands on the controls brought our long, slender ship back

into its proper path I stepped over beside him. Standing between the

Antarian and the Spican and glancing back through our rear telescopic

distance-windows I could make out in a moment the other ships of our

squadron, falling again into formation far behind us. Then I had

turned, and with my two friends was gazing forth into the great vista

of light and darkness that lay before us.

It was toward our left that the light lay, for to the right and in

front and behind us the eye met only blackness, the utter, unimaginable

blackness of outer space. Left of us, though, there stretched along the

ebon heavens a colossal belt of countless brilliant stars, the gathered

suns of our galaxy. A stupendous, disk-like mass of stars, it floated

there in the black void of space like a little island of light, and

hundreds of billions of miles outward from the outermost suns of this

island-universe our little squadron flashed through space, parallel

to its edge. Looking toward the great galaxy from that distance, its

countless thousands of glittering suns seemed merged almost in one

mighty flaming mass; yet even among those thousands there burned out

distinctly the clearer glory of the greater suns, the blue radiance

of Vega, or the yellow splendor of Altair, or the white fire of great

Canopus itself. Here and there among the fiery thousands, too, there

glowed the strange, misty luminescence of the galaxy's mighty comets,

while at the galaxy's edge directly to our left there flamed among the

more loosely scattered stars the great Cancer cluster, a close-packed,

ball-like mass of hundreds of shining suns, gathered together there

like a great hive of swarming stars.

On our right, though, sharply contrasted with the galaxy's far-flung

splendor, there stretched only blackness, the deep, utter blackness of

that titanic void that lies outside our universe. Black, deep black, it

stretched away in unthinkable reaches of eternal emptiness and night.

Far away in that blackness the eye could in time make out, hardly to

be seen, a few faint little patches of misty light, glowing feebly

to our eyes across the mighty gloom of space; faint patches of light

that were, I knew, galaxies of stars, island-universes like our own,

separated from our own by a titanic void of millions of light-years of

space, an immensity of emptiness into which even the swiftest of our

ships could not venture, and beside which the distances between our own

stars seemed tiny and insignificant.

In silence we gazed into that mighty panorama of thronging stars and

cosmic void, standing there together as we three had stood for many an

hour, Antarian and Spican and human. From the ship's hull, stretched

beneath the little pilot room in which we stood, there came dimly

to our ears the strangely differing voices of our crew. Over these

occasional voices, too, there beat unceasingly the deep, droning hum

of the great mechanisms whose tremendously powerful force-vibrations

were propelling us on through space at almost a thousand light-speeds.

Except for these familiar half-heard sounds, though, there was only

silence in the pilot room, and in silence we three gazed as our ship

and the ships behind it flashed on and on. Then, abruptly, Korus Kan

uttered a sharp cry, pointing upward.

"Look!" he cried. "That swarm on the space-chart!"

* * * * *

Startled, our eyes lifted to where the Antarian pointed, toward the

big space-chart on the wall above the window. A great rectangle of

smooth, burnished metal, upon its flat surface were represented all in

the heavens immediately about us. On the chart's left side there shone

scores of little circles of glowing light, extending outward from the

left edge for several inches, representing the outmost suns of the

great galaxy to our left. Inches outward from the outermost of those

glowing circles there moved upon the blank metal, creeping upward in a

course parallel to the galaxy's edge, a formation of a dozen tiny black

dots, the dots that were our squadron of ships, holding to our regular

patrol far out from the galaxy's edge. And inches outward from our

ship-dots, in turn, out in the blank metal at the chart's right, there

moved inward toward us and toward the galaxy a great swarm of other

black dots, a close-massed cluster of thousands of dots there on the

chart that represented, we knew, a mighty swarm of matter moving in out

of the void of outer space toward our ships and toward the galaxy to

our left!

"A swarm of meteors!" I exclaimed. It could be nothing else, I knew,

that was approaching our galaxy out of the unplumbed, awful void. "A

swarm of meteors from outer space! And moving at unthinkable speed!"

"A swarm of meteors from outer space," repeated Korus Kan,

thoughtfully. "It's unprecedented--and yet the space-chart doesn't lie."

I glanced again at the big chart. "The swarm's heading almost straight

toward us," I said, watching the close-massed dots creeping across the

big chart. "But it's traveling at thousands of light-speeds, and must

be caught in an ether-current of inconceivable velocity."

"Its speed seems to be steadily slackening, though," said Jhul Din as

we gazed up at the space-chart in silent awe.

I nodded. "Yes, but it ought to reach us within a few more hours.

We'll halt our ships here until it reaches us, and as it passes we

can ascertain its extent and report to General Patrol Headquarters at

Canopus. They can send out meteor-sweeps then to destroy the swarm

before it can enter the galaxy and menace interstellar navigation."

Even while I spoke Korus Kan had swiftly shifted the levers in his

grasp, quickly reducing our craft's great speed, while the half-score

of ships behind us slowed their own flight at the same moment in answer

to his signal. The humming drone of our great propulsion-vibration

generators waned to a thin whine and then died altogether as our ships

came to a halt, while at the same moment the dozen ship-dots on the

space-chart ceased to move also, hanging motionless on that chart as

we were hanging motionless in space. Inches to the right of them,

though, the close-massed dots of the mighty swarm were still creeping

steadily across the chart, though now their unheard-of speed was fast

slackening. In silent awe we regarded them. Out there in the awful

void beside us, we knew, the great swarm was rushing ever closer

toward us even as those thousands of close-massed dots crept toward our

own ship-dots, and a strange tension held us as we watched them moving

nearer.

To any of our comrades in the Interstellar Patrol it would have seemed

strange enough, no doubt, the tense silence in which we watched the

approach of the swarm, for surely a meteor-swarm more or less was

nothing new to us. We had met with many a one in our patrols inside

the galaxy, and many a time had aided in the work of the great

star-cruising meteor-sweeps which keep free of them the space-lanes

between the galaxy's suns. But this swarm, rushing toward us out of the

mighty depths of outer space, was different. Never in all our history

had any such mighty swarm of matter as this come toward our galaxy from

the unplumbed outer void, and at such a speed as this one. For though

it was moving slower and slower there on the space-chart, the great

swarm was still flashing through space toward the galaxy at more than a

thousand light-speeds, a velocity greater than that of any of our ships.

Silently we watched, there in the pilot room, while the swarm of

close-massed dots crept across the big space-chart, toward the galaxy

and toward the dozen dots that were our ships. Slower and slower still

it was moving, its speed smoothly and steadily decreasing as it swept

in toward the galaxy from outer space. Such a decrease in speed was

strange enough, we knew, but knew too that if the swarm was being borne

on toward us by a terrific ether-current its speed would slacken as the

speed of the current slackened.

The minutes dragged past, forming into an hour, and another, and

another, while we watched and waited there, and steadily still the

swarm crept on toward us, moving on now at a steady velocity of five to

six hundred light-speeds. Our ships hung silent and motionless still

in space, with away to our left the flaming torches of the galaxy's

thronging suns, and to our right the great vault of blackness out of

which that mighty swarm of matter was rushing toward us.

Straight toward us almost it was heading on the space-chart, and now,

as it crept over the last half-inch that separated it on the chart from

our ships, I gave an order that sent our ships and those behind it

slanting steeply upward. In swift, great spirals our squadron climbed,

and within a moment more was hanging thousands of miles higher in

space than before, our prows pointed now toward the galaxy. Tensely

I watched the space-chart and then, just as the great swarm of black

dots reached the dozen dots that were our ships, I uttered a single

word, and instantly our squadron was racing toward the galaxy at a

full five-hundred light-speeds, moving now at the same speed as the

great swarm and hanging thousands of miles above it as it rushed on

through space toward the galaxy. It was the familiar maneuver of the

Interstellar Patrol in reconnoitering a meteor-swarm, to hang above

it and race at the same speed with it through space, but never yet

had we essayed it on such a swarm as this one, moving as it was at an

incredible speed for inanimate matter, and without any signs about it

of the ether-current which we had thought was the reason for that speed.

Now, as our ships hummed swiftly on, I stood with Jhul Din at the

projecting distance-windows, gazing down into the mighty abyss of space

that lay beneath us. Somewhere in that abyss, I knew, the great swarm

was racing on at the same speed as ourselves, but as we gazed tensely

down our eyes met nothing but an impenetrable darkness, the cold, empty

blackness of the infinite void. I turned, signaled with my hand to

Korus Kan at the controls, and then our ship began to drop smoothly

to a lower level as it raced on, following a downward-slanting course

now with the ships of our squadron behind close on our track. Down we

slanted, still racing onward at the same terrific speed, while the

Spican and I searched the darkness beneath with our eyes through the

thick-lensed protecting windows, yet still was nothing visible in the

tenebrous void below. Lower, still lower, our ships slanted, and then

suddenly Jhul Din gave utterance to a short exclamation.

"Down there!" he cried, pointing down through the little window. "Those

shining points--you see them?"

* * * * *

I gazed tensely down in the direction in which he pointed, and for a

time could see nothing still but the infinite unlit blackness. Then

suddenly my eyes too made out a few gleaming little points of light in

the darkness far beneath us, points of light far separated from each

other and driving on through space toward the galaxy far ahead, at

the same speed as ourselves. And now, as our ships slanted still down

over and toward them, they became more and more numerous to my eyes, a

vast, far-flung swarm of fully five thousand gleaming points, spaced a

thousand miles from one another, and racing on through space in a great

triangular or wedge-shaped formation, the triangle's apex toward the

galaxy ahead. The light with which each gleamed made the whole vast

swarm seem like a throng of tiny ghosts of stars, driving through the

void, though I knew that metallic meteors sometimes shone so with light

reflected from the stars.

Never yet, though, had I seen a swarm gathered in such a precise

formation as this one, or one that flashed onward at such vast and

uniform speed. It was like a scene out of some strange dream, lying

there in the black void beneath us, the mighty, silent swarm of

light-points whirling on through space at that awful speed toward the

massed, burning suns of the galaxy far ahead, out of the mysteries of

outer space. Held still silent by the strangeness of it we gazed down

upon it, as our ships slanted lower still. Then, as our squadron drove

down at last to within a few hundred miles of the great swarm, the

nature of those driving points of light became suddenly visible, and we

gasped aloud.

For these were no meteors that drove through space in that mighty swarm

beneath us! These were no fragments of cosmic wreckage out of the

flotsam of smashed worlds and stars! These were mighty, symmetrical

shapes of smooth metal, each an elongated oval in form and with rounded

ends, each a great ship as large or larger than our own! The front

end of each of these great oval ships glowed with white light, the

light-points we had glimpsed from above, since the front end of each

was transparent-walled like our own pilot room, and brilliantly lit

inside. In those white-lit pilot rooms we could half glimpse, as we

flashed along, masses of strange machinery and switches, and stranger

beings that seemed to move about them, apparently directing the course

and speed of their great ships as the whole mighty swarm of them rushed

on through space, toward the galaxy's suns ahead!

"Space-ships!" My exclamation held all the stunned amazement that had

gripped us all. "Space-ships in thousands from the outer void----"

Before I could complete the thought that was flashing across my mind

there was a cry from Jhul Din, beside me, and I wheeled about to find

him pointing downward, gazed swiftly down to see that a score or more

of the great, strange ships beneath were suddenly slanting up toward

us, as we raced along above them. With the swiftness of thought they

flashed up toward us, and I had a lightning vision of the white-lit

pilot rooms at the nose of each, rushing toward us like blurs of

brilliant light. Then, as I shouted aloud, Korus Kan swung the controls

in his grasp with lightning speed, and instantly our ship flashed

sidewise in a twisting turn.

Even as we swerved, though, there leapt from the foremost of the

uprushing craft a pale broad beam of ghostly white light that stabbed

up toward and past us, grazing our ship, and that struck the foremost

of the ships of our squadron behind us. I saw the broad beam strike

that ship squarely, saw it playing on and through it, and for a moment

could see no effect apparent. Then, as the great pale beam played

across the ship in a swift slicing sweep, I saw that as it shone

through that ship's pilot room the figures inside it suddenly vanished!

The next moment the ship had suddenly driven crazily off into space,

whirling blindly away without occupant or crew, all life in it wiped

instantly from existence by that terrible death-beam that had played

through it! Now the attacking ships were leaping up toward us, flashing

up lightning-like with ghostly beams of death whirling and stabbing

about and toward us, and now, over the wild clamor of sudden battle in

the hull beneath, I heard the great cry of Jhul Din, beside me.

"_Space-ships in thousands, and they're attacking us! They've come from

somewhere toward our galaxy--have come out of outer space itself to

attack our universe!_"

_2. Chased Through the Void_

The moment of swift, terrific battle that followed was to me then only

a wild uproar of flashing action and hoarse shouts, as the mighty ships

beneath leapt up toward us. It was only another sudden twisting turn

of our ship by Korus Kan that saved us from annihilation in that wild

first moment of combat, since the score or more of pale, deadly beams

from beneath, stabbing past us as we twisted, struck the ships of our

squadron behind and in another moment had sent half of them reeling

blindly and aimlessly out of sight, driving haphazardly off into space

as the ghostly beams annihilated all the life inside them. Then, as

we raced still through space above the mighty swarm, the score of

attacking ships suddenly divided, a dozen of them driving up toward the

ships behind us while the remainder flashed toward us, their great,

pale rays still stabbing and slicing as they leapt on.

Even as our ship swerved from the pale beams leaping up toward us,

though, I had shouted an order into the tube beside me, and now from

our own craft there stabbed down toward the upward-rushing ships a

half-dozen long, narrow rays of brilliant red light. Four of the ships

below were struck squarely by those brilliant rays, and from our crew

came shouts of triumph as those four vanished in blinding flares of

crimson light. It was the deadly ray of the Interstellar Patrol,

destroying all matter it touched by raising its frequency of vibration,

since matter itself is but a certain frequency vibration of the ether,

and when that frequency is raised to that of light-vibrations the

matter is changed in that moment from solid matter to light.

Even in the moment that the four ships vanished beneath our rays,

though, I had glanced backward and had seen the last of the ships of

our squadron behind vanishing in a wild chaos of whirling death-beam

and crimson ray, since scores of other ships were leaping up to attack

us from the mighty swarm far beneath. Toward us now, it seemed, ships

were flashing from every direction, and I heard the hissing of the

ray-tubes below as our crimson rays burned out to meet them, saw

three more of them flare and vanish, glimpsed a dozen shafts of the

death-beam graze past us as Korus Kan twisted our ship in an erratic,

corkscrew course. Not for moments longer, though, I knew, could we keep

up this wild and unequal battle, since the mass of ships behind that

had annihilated our squadron were now leaping after us. Our only chance

was in flight.

I shouted to Korus Kan, and then, as scores of the ghostly beams

swept through the void toward us, I saw him swerve the control-levers

in his hands sharply sidewise, so that our ship abruptly turned

squarely to the right, away from the great swarm and the attacking

ships about us. It was a maneuver that caught those ships off their

guard, and traveling as we were at the terrific velocity of five

hundred light-speeds, it put millions of miles of space between us

and the great swarm before the attacking ships could realize what we

had done. In a split-second they had vanished from sight about us and

we were again rushing on through black and empty space, turning now

and again heading toward the galaxy's far-flung suns. But, as I gazed

anxiously at the big space-chart, I saw that now the great swarm of

black dots upon it had slanted from their former course and was heading

straight after the single dot that was our ship. By means of their own

space-charts, which I knew they must have, they had discovered our

trick and were in pursuit!

"Let her out to full speed!" I cried to Korus Kan. "They're after us

and our only chance is to get to the galaxy ahead of them!"

Instantly Korus Kan opened wide the power-controls, and with a mounting

humming roar our great ship went rapidly into its highest speed, its

great generators flinging it on through the ether at a thousand times

the velocity of light, propelling it headlong onward toward the galaxy

that lay still far ahead, its mighty disk-like mass of shining suns

stretched across the blackness of space before us. And behind us rushed

the great swarm, too, racing on after us and toward the galaxy still. I

knew that the speed of that mighty swarm of ships must be inconceivably

greater than that of our own, since we ourselves had seen them on our

charts racing in toward the galaxy from outer space with velocity

unthinkable, a velocity which we had thought could only be due to some

great ether-current, and which they had only slackened as they drew

near the galaxy. There was a slender chance, though, that we might yet

escape, and now as we rushed on toward the galaxy in headlong flight I

turned quickly to the speech-projection instrument beside me, pressing

a button in its base. A moment later there came from it a clear,

twanging voice.

"General Patrol Headquarters at Canopus," it announced, and swiftly I

responded.

"Dur Nal, Captain of Patrol Squadron 598-77, speaking," I said. "I

desire to report the discovery of a swarm of some five thousand strange

space-ships which have appeared out of outer space, heading toward the

galaxy. These ships are apparently capable of immense speeds and are

armed with a form of death-beam unfamiliar to us, but extremely deadly

in operation. On discovering these ships we were attacked by them and

all of my squadron except my own ship destroyed. Our own ship is now

being chased inward toward the galaxy, heading in the general direction

of the Cancer cluster, and though the swarm is gradually overhauling us

we may be able to escape. From the size, number and deadly armament of

these alien ships it is apparent that they contemplate a general attack

upon our universe."

There was a moment's pause when I had finished, and then from the

speech-instrument there came the metallic voice again, as calm as

though I had made only a routine report of position and progress.

"Order of Lacq Larus, Chief of the Interstellar Patrol, to Dur Nal. You

will make every effort to elude the pursuing swarm, and if you can do

so will endeavor to draw it into the Cancer cluster. All the cruisers

of the Interstellar Patrol will be assembled inside the cluster as

swiftly as possible, and if you are successful in drawing the pursuing

swarm inside it will be possible for our fleet to fall upon it in an

unexpected attack, and destroy these invaders, whatever their source or

purpose, before they can obtain a foothold in the galaxy. You have the

order?"

"I have the order," I replied, as calmly as possible, and with a word

of acknowledgment the twanging voice ceased.

I wheeled around to Korus Kan and Jhul Din, a flame of excitement

leaping within me. "It's a chance to destroy them all!" I exclaimed.

"If we can hold out until we reach the galaxy--can lead them into that

cluster----"

Their own eyes were afire now as they saw the chance, and now Korus

Kan tightened his grasp on the controls, gazing grimly ahead with

power open to the last notch, while Jhul Din strode swiftly out of the

pilot room and down to the ship's hull beneath, where, in a moment

more, I heard his deep voice booming out orders to the crew as they

labored to wring from our throbbing generators the last ounce of speed.

Yet now, too, looking up at the big space-chart, I saw that the gap

on it between our single little ship-dot and the great swarm of dots

behind was terrifyingly small, a gap of less than a half-inch which

represented no more than a few billion miles of space. And slowly,

steadily, that gap was closing, as the great swarm slowly overhauled

us. With their immense potential speed they could have flashed past

us in a moment, had they so desired, yet I knew too that they dared

not use such terrific speed so near the galaxy, and that even did they

use it we would be able to turn and double before they could slow down

enough to catch us. Their plan, it was obvious, was simply to overhaul

us slowly until they had just reached us, and then sweep down on us

with the death-beams while we strove in vain to escape them.

So at our utmost speed we flashed on through the void toward the

galaxy, a mighty belt of burning suns across the blackness before us,

and toward the close-massed cluster of suns at its edge that shone

among the scattered stars around it like a solid ball of light, while

there rushed after us through space at the same mighty speed the great

swarm of strange craft which we were attempting to lead into that

cluster.

* * * * *

Surely in all time was never so strange a flight, a pursuit, as this

one--a flight inward through the void with unimaginable beings from

the mysteries of infinite outer space as our pursuers, flashing on in

thousands on our track, toward us and toward the galaxy they meant to

attack.

Far ahead in that galaxy, too, I knew, its forces would be preparing

to meet that attack, and from the central sun of Canopus the alarm

would be flashing out across our universe from star to star, from world

to whirling world, flashing in warning from end to end of the galaxy,

to all the stars and worlds and races of the Federated Suns. And even

while that warning flashed, the great star-cruisers of the Interstellar

Patrol would be gathering in answer, would be rushing headlong between

the suns across the galaxy from every quarter of it to mass in force

inside the Cancer cluster. Could we escape the pursuing swarm and

lead it into that cluster it would still be hours, I knew, before we

reached it, even at our tremendous speed, and in those hours all the

fighting-ships of the galaxy would be racing toward the rendezvous

there and massing to meet this mighty invading fleet.

Could we escape? The thought beat monotonously through my brain as I

stood there with Korus Kan, silent as the Antarian as we watched the

great swarm of dots creep closer and closer to us on the space-chart.

On and on our ship was racing, the throbbing generators now making the

whole ship vibrate with their vast power, and visibly the galaxy's

shining suns were largening ahead as we flashed on toward them; yet as

the minutes passed, forming into an hour, and then another, the great

swarm behind crept ever remorselessly closer. Rocking and swaying as

we plunged through great ether-currents, we held still straight toward

the ball of swarming suns that was the Cancer cluster, at the galaxy's

edge ahead; yet still we had covered no more than two-thirds of the

distance that had separated us from it, and now the great swarm was no

more than a few million miles behind, a mere fraction of an inch on the

space-chart.

It was as though our pursuers were but playing with us, so calmly

and steadily did they overtake us, and in despair I turned from the

galaxy's mighty rampart of stars, ahead, to the rear distance-windows.

A moment more, I knew, and the thousands of ships behind would be

drawing into sight in those windows, would be speeding down upon us

even as we sought to flee and would annihilate us with an attack which

we could not hope to escape a second time. Hopelessly I gazed back into

the blackness of space behind, but then wheeled back suddenly as there

came a sudden exclamation from Korus Kan. He had swerved our flying

ship's course a little and was pointing up toward the space-chart now,

his strange eyes agleam with excitement.

"If we can make it, it's a chance to throw them off our track,"

he exclaimed, and as I gazed up toward the space-chart I suddenly

understood.

On that chart our single ship-dot was rushing on toward the glowing

circles of the galaxy's suns, with the mighty swarm of black dots that

were our pursuers close behind, and now I saw that a little ahead

of our own ship-dot there hung stationary on the chart another dot,

one not of black but of red. Instantly I recognized it as one of the

great space-buoys hung in space to mark the positions of the mighty

ether-maelstroms which were the most perilous of all the menaces to

interstellar navigation. Formed by the meeting of vast ether-currents,

these maelstroms had been marked for all space-navigators by placing

near each a special space-ship, or buoy, which automatically

and without crew kept its position, showing as a red dot on all

space-charts to warn passing ships of the maelstrom's position. The

great maelstrom ahead, I knew, was one of the mightiest of all in and

around our galaxy, and now as our ship sped straight through space

toward it I saw Korus Kan's plan and caught my breath with sudden hope.

"We'll head straight toward the maelstrom, and then swerve aside just

before we reach it," he was saying. "The swarm behind can have no

knowledge of its existence, and if they run into it before they can

change their course it'll delay them, at least."

Tensely I watched now as our ship raced on, the humming roar of its

generators rising a half-pitch still higher as Jhul Din, beneath, drove

the crew to their last strength to win another light-speed. A scant

few million miles ahead the great maelstrom lay, marked only by the

red dot on the chart, and as we sped straight on toward that dot our

ship already was rocking and bucking as we drove through the mighty

ether-currents whose meeting formed the maelstrom. Braced against the

room's wall we stood, eyes straining ahead through the darkness and

against the glare of the galaxy's suns in the distance, and then, as I

turned to glance back, I saw that behind us now there gleamed in the

blackness points of shining light, points that were swiftly largening

and nearing us, countless in number and driving through space straight

on our track. With each fleeting moment they were flashing nearer

toward us, and now were so near that through the distance-window I

could plainly make out their white-lit pilot rooms as they drove after

us. A moment more, I knew, would see them close enough to loose the

death-beams upon us, but at that moment there was a half-breathed

exclamation from Korus Kan, and I turned swiftly about.

He was gripping the controls tensely, gazing forward into the blackness

that lay between us and the galaxy, and even as I turned I saw that

our ship-dot had flashed past the red danger-dot on the space-chart.

Instantly then Korus Kan twisted the controls sharply to the left,

and immediately our craft was flashing off in a great curve from the

path it had been following, veering suddenly toward the left while the

great swarm just behind us raced still for the moment straight ahead.

Then, before they could swerve aside to follow us, I had a single

flashing glimpse through the window of the whole mighty swarm suddenly

disintegrating, shattering, the thousands of ships that made it up

suddenly whirling away in all directions in blind chaos of aimless

movement as they rushed straight into the mighty ether-maelstrom into

which we had led them. Then they had vanished, whirling blindly about,

as we flashed on out of sight, our own craft swaying wildly as we drove

on through the great currents about the maelstrom. On the space-chart,

though, I saw the great swarm's pursuit for the moment had ceased,

the myriad dots that made it up milling aimlessly about in the mighty

maelstrom's grip while our single ship-dot raced straight on.

"A chance!" I cried, as our ship flashed on toward the galaxy's suns.

"A chance yet--if we can get to the Cancer cluster before them!"

* * * * *

Now our cruiser was again flashing on at its very highest speed,

straight toward that cluster, while behind us the great swarm whirled

chaotically about. Before us the galaxy's suns were burning out in

waxing splendor as we shot through space toward them, the cluster of

closer-packed suns that was our goal changing now from a ball of solid

light into a ball-like mass of thronging, flaming stars as we drew

nearer it. But as Jhul Din came back into the pilot room from beneath,

as we three contemplated the space-chart and then the great wall of

suns in the blackness ahead, our faces set again after our brief

triumph, for we knew that billions of miles of space lay still between

us and those suns. And now, too, we saw on the chart that the great

swarm of ships behind had escaped from the maelstrom's grip at last

and was racing after us once more in swift pursuit, a hundred of their

ships in the van now of that pursuit with the main body of the swarm

behind.

"It's the last stretch!" I exclaimed, as we gazed tensely at the chart

and into the void ahead. "Unless we get to the Cancer cluster ahead of

them now it's the end."

Our ship was leaping forward still at its uttermost speed, its strained

generators functioning nobly, but the great swarm behind was again

picking up speed itself, the hundred ships massed together a few

million miles ahead of the main swarm hardly more than an inch behind

our own ship-dot on the space-chart. On--on--straight toward the

fiery mass of the Cancer cluster we fled, while behind us, in cruel

repetition of the first part of this wild chase the pursuing ships

slowly cut down the gap between us, the hundred foremost ones leaping

every moment closer toward us, while behind them the main swarm came

on more deliberately. Ahead now the galaxy filled the heavens before

us, myriads of burning stars that gemmed the infinite night with

their flaming brilliance, but of all in the stupendous scene around

and before us we had eyes only for the thronging suns of the Cancer

cluster, and for the space-chart above us.

On--on--the minutes of that mad onward flight were passing each like an

eternity as we leapt forward, tensely braced there in the pilot room,

peering forward, with behind us the hundred pursuing ships close on our

track, remorselessly overtaking us, with behind them the great swarm of

thousands of ships that were driving to attack our universe. Ahead of

us, I knew, there somewhere in the flaming cluster of suns before us,

the cruisers of the great Interstellar Patrol, the war-ships of our

universe, would be gathering and massing to meet that great invading

fleet, but unless we could escape and lead it into the cluster where

they waited they would have no chance for a surprize attack. Before

us by now the great cluster lay in waxing, flaming splendor, only a

scant few billion miles ahead, its thronging, gathered suns burning out

in supreme glory amid the galaxy's looser-swarming suns, but now the

hundred foremost ships of the mighty swarm behind were almost upon us.

Even as I turned, now, toward the distance-window behind me, I heard

a deep exclamation from Jhul Din, who had turned to gaze back also,

and as I too gazed through that window a chill seemed to creep through

my very blood, for light-points were showing there in the blackness

behind, and drawing swiftly nearer. It was the hundred foremost ships!

Ever closer they were racing toward us, overtaking us again with every

moment, while far behind them the main swarm raced on after them.

With each passing moment the light-points behind were broadening,

brightening, as the ships came closer, but now the great cluster

ahead loomed full before us, its myriads of flaming, thundering suns

drenching all in our pilot room in their fierce, terrific glare.

Straight ahead of us, at the mighty cluster's outmost edge, flamed a

great double star among all the other thronging stars that made it up,

two giant white suns separated only by a comparatively narrow gap. And

straight toward that narrow gap our fleeing ship was heading!

Behind us now the hundred long oval ships were drawing into plain

sight, their white-lit pilot rooms giving us brief glimpses inside of

massed machinery and slender beings we could but half-glimpse that

moved inside. From the foremost of those ships, now, there stabbed out

toward us the broad, pale, ghostly beam of death, but as yet the gap

between us was too wide for the beam to bridge, and we flashed onward

still, the gleaming shapes of our pursuers leaping still closer. Before

us now the whole firmament seemed a wild chaos of gigantic suns, as we

raced straight in toward the mighty cluster, with ahead the narrow gap

that separated the two giant white suns toward which we were heading.

Jhul Din gripped my shoulder, pointed ahead, shouted to me over the

roar of our generators. "Unless we slacken speed we'll never make it

through that gap without driving into one of the suns," he cried.

I shook my head. "It's death either way!" I yelled to him. "Our only

chance is to drive between them at full speed!"

Now before us the whole heavens seemed a single vast sheet of boiling

white flame as we drove in toward the two mighty thundering suns, the

gap between them seeming no more than a narrow black cleft at the

terrific velocity at which we were moving. At our topmost speed we

rushed toward that narrow gap, the ships behind still leaping full upon

our track, closing swiftly down upon us now. And now, as Korus Kan

braced himself and held our controls still steady, we were flashing

squarely in between the two gigantic suns. On either side of us they

towered, thundering, boiling upright oceans of devouring, brilliant

white flame, whose awful glare all but blinded us, seeming to fill all

the universe about us with one great mass of raging fires. Out toward

our onward-flashing ship there licked from the great suns on either

side titanic tongues of flame bursting out toward us for millions of

miles, huge prominences that could have licked up worlds like midges,

but straight on between the walling fires our throbbing ship still

flashed.

Now the hundred ships behind, still after us through that hell of light

and flame, were racing down upon us even as we sped between the giant

flaming suns, and now from behind shot shaft upon shaft of the pale

death-beams, hardly to be seen in the awful blinding glare. As the

beams sprang toward us, though, Korus Kan swerved to the left, and for

a moment it seemed that we had swerved from death in one form only to

meet it in another, since at our terrific speed we veered millions of

miles in that moment toward the left gigantic sun. Its boiling fires

were all about us, seemed to encompass us, and then just as it seemed

that we were racing into the mighty glowing corona to our deaths Korus

Kan had swerved our ship backward into the center of the narrow gap.

And now we were reaching that gap's end, were passing from between the

giant suns, and out into more open space inside the great cluster, with

the pursuing ships again leaping forward to loose their deadly beams.

Out from between the two great suns we flashed, before us now the

interior of the mighty cluster, a great swarm of flaming suns that

thronged space all about us, and about many of which swung great

families of planets, dozens of whirling worlds. Even as we shot into

the interior of the great cluster, though, from between the two giant

suns, the hundred pursuing craft had leaped forward upon us with one

great burst of sudden speed, were behind us, on each side, all about

us. It was the end, we knew, and there was an instant of sheer silence

as we waited for that end, waited for the pale beams of death from the

ships about us. But before they could loose those beams there flashed

suddenly upon them from each side other ships, two mighty masses of

ships like our own, that burst suddenly out upon our pursuers from

behind the two great suns between which we had just come. Ships like

our own! Ships long and slender and gleaming! Ships of the Interstellar

Patrol, striking at the vanguard of the invaders in defense of our

universe!

_3. Death-Beam and Crimson Ray_

Even as the great masses of ships on each side leapt out upon our

pursuers, Korus Kan had glimpsed them, and had swung our own ship

instantly around in a great curve. On each side of us, now, were the

thousands of cruisers of the great patrol, and before us were the

hundred ships that had chased us in toward the galaxy through space.

Before those ships could recover from their surprize, before their

occupants could realize the trap into which they had ventured, our

whole vast fleet was leaping upon them from both sides, flashing down

upon the hundred invading craft before they could turn from their

onward flight.

Down with them swooped our own ship now, and we shouted aloud as we

saw from all the swooping ships about us, as from our own, myriad

brilliant shafts of the brilliant red ray flashing down and striking

the enemy ships ahead and below. Within an instant, it seemed, half

those racing ships had flared and vanished in brilliant bursts of

crimson light, while the rest had dipped and turned in a wild effort

to escape. Back toward the two great white suns they raced, seeking to

escape between them into outer space again, to rejoin the oncoming main

swarm of their great fleet, but down before and ahead of them leapt

our Patrol cruisers, the red rays again whirling and cutting in great

circles of death. And now as they vanished one by one beneath those

rays, struggling still through space toward the two great suns, the

death beams of the remaining ships sprang savagely up toward us, and

I saw cruisers here and there in our own fleet driving aimlessly off,

smashing into one another and whirling blindly away as the beams wiped

out all life in them.

But now we were leaping after the fleeing ships between the great

suns again, and as we shot after them through those terrific walls of

flame our rays again took toll of them; so that as we flashed out from

between the two mighty suns and into outer space once more but a scant

half-dozen of them remained, and these leapt instantly forward and out

into the blackness of outer space to rejoin the main body of their

approaching fleet, while we in turn sprang after them in hot pursuit,

though our ships were not capable of the tremendous speeds of those

invading ones.

"Score for us!" cried Jhul Din as our ships flashed on. "We've all but

wiped out those hundred!"

"Wait!" I told him. "The main body of their fleet's coming on toward

us----"

Even as I spoke I saw the ship of Lacq Larus, Chief of the Patrol,

the flag-ship of our fleet, slackening its speed ahead of us, and a

moment later there came from the speech-instrument beside me his clear,

unruffled voice.

"All ships halt and mass in battle formation!" he ordered; and at

once, in answer to that command, our flashing ships slowed and

stopped, forming instantly into three thick, short columns and hanging

motionless in space.

On the space-chart above, now, we could see the mass of thousands

of dots that was our fleet hanging motionless a little out from the

galaxy's edge, and could see, too, a little outward from that mass of

dots, another and equally large mass, that moved slowly in toward us,

the great swarm that was the invading fleet. Already the few fleeing

survivors of our hundred pursuers had raced back into that main swarm,

and now, moving ever more slowly but coming steadily forward, it was

driving through space toward us. The great swarm was moving still in a

triangular formation, the triangle's apex toward us, and now at last,

as we stared forward into the blackness, we made out light-points

ahead, a vast swarm of them in that steady triangular formation, moving

deliberately toward us.

Slowly now those light-points were largening, were changing into great,

gleaming ships as their fleet came on toward us. Ever more slowly it

moved, now at but a fraction of a light-speed, for it was evident that

they, like us, sought no fight-and-run skirmish but a battle to the

finish. At last they had stopped, had halted just out of ray-reach

ahead and were hanging motionless in space like ourselves, facing us.

And then, for a moment, it seemed as though about us was an unbroken

stillness and silence, as the two mighty fleets, numbering each fully

five thousand ships, faced each other there in space.

I think that never in all space and time could there have been a moment

as strange as that one, when the mighty fleet of our galaxy lay prow to

prow with this other mighty fleet from the dark, unguessed mysteries

of outer space. All about us lay the cold, lightless blackness of the

eternal void, with the great galaxy's colossal rampart of flaming suns

stretched across the heavens behind us alone blazing in that blackness,

the great Cancer cluster at its edge, just behind us, flaming with all

the glory of its mass of gathered suns. A single instant that silence

and stillness reigned in the stupendous scene about us, an instant that

to our strained nerves seemed endless, and then a sharp order rang

from the speech-instrument beside me, and as one our great fleet leapt

forward while the opposing fleet sprang to meet us. The battle was on.

I saw the enemy fleet flashing straight toward us, the apex of its

triangle pointed full at our center, and knew instinctively that it

meant to cut us into halves with the great wedge that was itself.

But as it flashed straight toward us and upon us there rang another

order from the instrument at my side, and instantly our three short

columns of ships veered to the right, changing in a moment into one

long column, which instead of meeting the onrushing triangle flashed

along its side. As we shot past thus I had a lightning glimpse of the

masses of countless oval ships racing by, glimpsed too a score or more

of ships at the center of their fleet that seemed not oval but round

and disk-like in shape, and then forgot all else as from all our ships

there burst the brilliant red rays, raking the side of their fleet with

a deadly fire as we flashed past it. Then scores upon scores of their

ships were vanishing in crimson flares of light as those rays found

them, and though their death-beams found our own ships here and there

as we flashed by, the great mass of their ships dared not loose their

beams upon us lest they destroy their own ships, so skilful had been

our maneuver.

Only a moment did it last, that passing of the two fleets with red

ray and death-beam crossing, and then we were past them, were turning

and circling and racing back upon them to deliver another blow. Ahead

we could see the enemy fleet turning and racing back to meet us, with

beyond them the great suns of the galaxy flaming in the blackness of

space, and again we leapt straight toward them there in the abysmal

void; but this time they had anticipated our maneuver and as we swerved

to the right of them their whole great fleet swerved right also, so

that in order to avoid a head-on collision with their fleet we were

forced to swerve still farther to the right, our long column racing

along through space now parallel to the galaxy's edge, with the enemy

ships strung in a similar column between us and the galaxy, racing

along with us through space at the same speed as ourselves, their pale

ghostly beams whirling toward us even as our crimson shafts cut through

the void toward them.

Ships on each side were vanishing, now, some flaring in wild explosions

of red light and disappearing as the scarlet rays found them, others

driving crazily and aimlessly away as the pale beams wiped out in an

instant all the crews inside them. But now we found ourselves at a

disadvantage, for our enemy's gleaming ships could hardly be made out

against the flaring suns of the galaxy, beyond them, while our own

glittering cruisers stood out clearly against the darkness of outer

space. It was an advantage of which they took swift use, for now the

broad pale beams were reaching toward us in increasing numbers as we

flashed along, while our own rays were all but ineffective, since,

blinded as we were by the flaring suns behind the opposing ships, we

could only loose the rays at random.

On still we raced, along the galaxy's edge, the great Cancer cluster

dropping behind us now as we sped on, our two great fleets striking

and grappling with each other even as they flashed on. Black space

and flaming suns, pale ray and red, oval ships and long cruisers,

all mingled and whirled in that wild scene like the features of some

tortured dream, but dream it was none to us, flashing on with our fleet

while in the hull beneath our crew loosed their red rays of death upon

the chance-seen enemy ships that flashed between us and the dazzling

suns. At an order flashed from the Chief's flag-ship our whole fleet

increased to its utmost velocity, striving to pass the enemy fleet

and get between it and the galaxy again, but the immeasurable speed

of these great invaders from outer space defeated our efforts. At the

same speed as ourselves they raced forward, keeping always between us

and the suns, and when we slowed our speed suddenly to fall behind them

they instantly did likewise.

Meanwhile ships all about us were driving aimlessly away, reeling

blindly off into space or smashing into each other, as the pale

death-beams found more and more of them in that mad running fight. Not

for many minutes longer, I knew, could the unequal contest be kept

up. Already we were past the Cancer cluster, still racing along the

galaxy's edge, and then abruptly there came another sharp order from

the instrument beside me. Instantly, in obedience to that order, all

our racing, battling ships slowed, swiftly grouped themselves into a

triangular formation, its apex in turn pointing toward the long line of

the enemy's fleet, between us and the galaxy. Then, before they could

mass their own fleet again, our triangle of mighty cruisers had leapt

straight toward the galaxy, its apex tearing full into the long line of

their ships.

* * * * *

There was a moment of reeling, crashing shock, as our massed fleet

crashed into that line, and all about me in that moment, it seemed,

patrol-cruisers and oval ships were smashing into each other, colliding

and bursting wildly there in mid-space. Then suddenly we were through,

the mass of our fleet ripping through their line by main force; but

now, as we smashed on through, another order sounded and we curved

swiftly about, and still in that close-massed formation rushed back

upon the shattered enemy line of ships. Before they could reform

that broken line, before they could mass again in their own close

formation, we were upon them, and then again our wedge-shaped mass

was driving through them, shattering their disorganized masses still

further and sending scores of them into annihilation now with our red

rays as we flashed through.

"We've won!" shouted Jhul Din, at the window, as our massed fleet again

wheeled and sped back upon the disorganized mass of ships before us.

"We've won! We've broken up their fleet!"

Now, though, we were rushing back to strike another deadly blow, and

before us, I saw, the thousands of the invading ships were still

milling aimlessly there in space, their organization shattered by

the smashing blows we had dealt them. With red rays flashing we sped

upon them again, but now, from the disorganized mass before us, I

saw a score or more of ships rising, flashing upward with immense

speed, ships that were not oval like the rest but flat and round and

disk-like, ships that I had vaguely glimpsed in our first rush on the

enemy fleet and which through all the battle they had kept protected

from us at their fleet's center. Now, with all their terrific speed,

the disk-ships were flashing upward, and even in the instant that we

rushed again upon our enemies they had attained to a great height above

us.

In that instant I gave them but a glance, since again we were darting

upon the mass of oval ships, our own cruiser now toward the rear of

our fleet's formation. But in the next moment, even as we flashed on

in our swift charge, I saw the score of disk-ships hanging high above

suddenly glow and flicker with strange force, the whole great lower

side of their big disks alive with a flickering, rippling, viridescent

light. And at the same moment I saw the ships of our fleet ahead of

us suddenly breaking from their mad charge forward and lifting slowly

upward, saw them twisting and turning and reeling but still moving

steadily up, toward those score of disk-ships high above, as though

pulled upward by a mighty, unseen grip.

"Attraction-ships!" I shouted, as I saw what was happening. "Those

disk-ships above--they're pulling our cruisers up with some magnetic or

electrical attractive force, that affects the metals of our ships but

not of theirs!"

We were still racing forward, at the rear of our fleet, but as I saw

that all the thousands of our cruisers before us, almost, were in the

grip of the attractive forces from above, were being pulled helplessly

upward, I shouted to Korus Kan, and he shifted the controls swiftly

sidewise, sending our cruiser veering away before it came beneath the

disk-ships high above and was pulled up likewise. We had escaped for

the moment, but now from ahead all the disorganized masses of the oval

invading ships had gathered together again and were leaping forward,

springing upon our own helpless masses of cruisers as they were pulled

resistlessly upward. From all about those masses of twisting, turning

cruisers the pale death-beams smote toward them, and only here and

there could a few shafts of the red ray answer them, caught as our

ships were in that tremendous grip.

Swiftly the cruisers of our fleet were being wiped clean of all the

crews inside, as the death-beams swung and circled through them from

all about. But a few score of cruisers at the rear of our fleet, like

ourselves, had managed to escape the relentless grip of the disk-ships

above, and now upon ourselves other masses of the oval ships were

rushing. Wildly we battled there, the hordes of the invading ships

spinning and flashing about us, but swiftly our few score of cruisers

were sent reeling blindly off by the death-beams; and now, looking back

an instant, I saw that the last of our mighty fleet of thousands of

cruisers were being annihilated by the death-beams of the oval ships

that swarmed about them, as they were drawn helplessly upward. We and

a few other cruisers, struggling wildly there against the encircling

masses of the oval ships, were all that remained of the galaxy's once

mighty fleet!

Even as we fought there, with the mad energy of despair, I saw the last

of our companion cruisers whirling away as the death-beams found it,

and realized that except for a few stragglers here and there like our

own ship the great fleet was annihilated, and that our only chance was

in flight. With every moment the oval ships about us were increasing in

number, completely encircling us, now, and it was only by a miracle of

veering, twisting turns by Korus Kan that our ship was able to avoid

the death-beams that reached toward us from all sides. Escape seemed

impossible, so completely were we hemmed in by the circling, striking

ships, and another moment would see our end, I knew; and so I wheeled,

shouted hoarsely to Korus Kan.

"We'll have to break through them!" I shouted. "Give her full speed,

Korus Kan, and head straight in toward the galaxy!"

Instantly he jerked open the power-control to the last notch, and as

our ship leapt forward like a living thing toward the masses of ships

that surrounded us he sent it driving straight toward the galaxy, and

toward a spot where there showed a momentary gap between the ships that

hemmed us in. But a single instant it took us to reach that gap, pale

beams whirling all about us while our own red rays flashed sullenly

forth, but in the instant that we reached it one of the oval ships had

seen our intention and had leapt forward to close the gap. An instant

too late it was to close it completely, but the oval ship's nose,

containing its transparent-walled pilot room, lay across our path as

we reached the gap, and straight into it we crashed!

* * * * *

There was a terrific, rending shock as our great prow tore into the

transparent-walled nose of the enemy ship, and beneath that shock

we saw the whole fore portion of the oval ship crumpling up and

collapsing, reeling away a shattered wreck of metal. Our own cruiser

rocked and swayed crazily at the collision, and for a moment it seemed

that we too were doomed, but the next our battered ship leapt forward,

and in an instant was free of the masses of oval ships that had

encircled us, and was driving now in toward the galaxy's suns, with a

score of the oval ships behind in hot pursuit.

In we drove, speeding now past the great Cancer cluster as we flashed

at our utmost speed into the galaxy, its great ball of gathered suns

flaring in the black heavens to our left as we sped inward. Behind came

our pursuers, racing on close after us; and now, glancing back beyond

them, I saw the whole mighty fleet of the invaders, still fully three

thousand ships in number, moving in toward the galaxy also, toward the

great Cancer cluster, with its swarming suns and thronging worlds,

saw the great fleet slowing, slanting down toward those suns, those

worlds, and knew then that these invaders, having annihilated the

galaxy's fleet, were settling upon the suns and worlds of the Cancer

cluster as a first foothold in our universe, a base from which they

could subdue all that universe. Then their fleet had vanished from our

distance-windows as we fled on, and of the score of our pursuers all

but three had turned back to rejoin that fleet.

The three remaining ships, though, drove straight on our track, and

swiftly were overhauling us, though inside the galaxy they dared not

use all their tremendous speed. Yet remorselessly after us they came,

and I knew that moments more would see our end unless we could escape

them. Directly ahead of us, though, there flamed a small crimson sun,

a dying, planetless star not far inward from the Cancer cluster,

largening each moment before us as we drove on toward it with terrific

speed. As I saw it a last plan flashed through my brain, and I turned

to Korus Kan.

"Head straight toward that sun!" I told him. "It's our only chance--to

get in close and lose them in its corona!"

He nodded grimly, swerving the ship a little, and now straight toward

the red star we raced, Jhul Din and I gazing out with him toward it as

we flashed on, and then behind to where the gleaming three ships of the

invaders drove after us. Swiftly they were overtaking us, two close

behind us and the remaining one a little behind the two, but ahead the

crimson star was filling almost all the heavens, now, a great sea of

fiery red flame that stretched above and beneath us, ahead, as though

occupying all the firmament. Its glare was awful, now, for we were

racing straight in toward the mighty corona of it, the glowing outer

atmosphere of radiant heat about it in which, I knew, no ship, however

heat-resistant, could live for more than a moment. On we raced, our

cruiser creaking and swaying still from the effects of the collision

with the ship we had smashed into, but flashing on with unabated speed.

Behind us, the three gleaming shapes of our pursuers were following

with unslackened speed, too, gradually drawing nearer, the two

foremost of those ships just behind us, now. Another moment and their

death-beams would stab toward us, and though we might destroy one or

even two of them the other would surely destroy us before we could

turn to it, I knew. The heat, too, of the great star before us was

penetrating into our ship, and full before us, not a dozen million

miles ahead, glowed the great corona. On we flashed--on--on--and then,

just as we were about to burst into the terrible, glowing corona, just

as the two ships close behind us sprang closer to stab with their beams

toward us, Korus Kan jerked the controls suddenly back, and instantly

our ship shot upward in a great vertical rush, while beneath, before

they could see and follow our change of course, the two racing oval

ships pursuing us had flashed on and into the mighty glare of the

corona. Then we glimpsed them shriveling, twisting, vanishing, in the

awful heat there, while our own cruiser turned now away from the red

sun.

Beneath we saw the single remaining oval ship turning, too, since it

had been far enough behind the two to change its course in time to

avoid the terrible corona. It seemed to pause, hesitate, and then, as

though satisfied that our ship too had met death in the corona with

its own two companions, it began to flash backward toward the galaxy's

edge, toward the Cancer cluster where the mighty invading fleet had

settled. And now, burning for revenge, our own cruiser was slanting

back with it and down toward it, as it drove on unsuspectingly beneath.

Another moment and we would be above it, would loose our red rays on

it before ever it suspected our existence. I was breathing with relief

at our escape, now, and heard an exulting cry from Jhul Din as he

strode down into the cruiser's hull from the pilot room, to direct the

ray-tubes there, but the next moment all our triumph vanished, for from

our cruiser's hull, toward its battered prow, there came suddenly a

succession of appalling cracks.

Standing suddenly tense we listened, and then, as there came from

beneath a prolonged, cracking roar, I heard shouts of fear from our

crew, and then Jhul Din had burst up into the pilot room from beneath.

"The cruiser's walls are giving!" he cried. "That collision with the

oval ship when we smashed our way out strained and wrenched loose the

whole prow and side-walls--the cruiser can't hold together for five

minutes more!"

There was a stunned silence in the little room then, a silence in which

it seemed that all the disasters that had befallen us were crowding

together upon us, overpowering us. This was the end, I knew. Within

minutes more the walls about us would collapse and in the infinite cold

and emptiness of interstellar space we would meet our deaths. We were

hours away from the nearest friendly planet, with all our companion

ships destroyed. It was the end, and for a moment I bowed to the

inevitable, stood in stunned despair awaiting that end. But then, as

my eyes fell upon the oval ship beneath, toward which our collapsing

cruiser was still slanting downward, I saw that upon its broad metal

back was the round circle of a space-door, like the double space-doors

of our own ship, and as I saw that, all the ancient combativeness that

has carried men out into the remotest of the galaxy's depths surged up

in me, and I wheeled around to the other two.

"Order all our crew down to the cruiser's lower space-door," I cried,

"and have an emergency space-suit issued to each of them!"

They stared at me, strangely, tensely. "What are you going to do?"

asked Jhul Din, at last, and my answer came out in a shout.

"We're going to do what never yet has been done in all the battles

between the stars!" I told him. "_We're going to put our lives on one

last mad chance and board that enemy ship in mid-space!_"

_4. A Struggle Between the Stars_

A moment there was silence in the pilot room, a silence of sheer

surprize, in which my two lieutenants gazed at me in utter amazement,

and then from Jhul Din came a great shout.

"It's a chance!" he cried. "If we can do it we'll escape yet!"

"Down to the space-door at once, then!" I told him. "The ship can't

last for seconds now!"

For even then there had come to our ears another long, cracking roar

as our battered walls gave still farther. Now Jhul Din was racing

down from the pilot room to assemble the crew, and now our cruiser

was slanting still farther down toward the long, gleaming oval ship

beneath. Down we slanted, until our own swaying cruiser hung at a

distance of a score of feet above the enemy ship, which, believing

us destroyed, never dreamed of our presence as we raced on through

space at the same speed as itself. And now Korus Kan hastily set the

automatic controls in the pilot room that would hold our cruiser at

the same speed and course without guiding hand, and then we too hurled

ourselves down the narrow stair, through the big power room where the

great generators were still throbbing on, down through the succession

of compartments in the cruiser's hull until we had reached the long,

low room that lay at its very bottom, and in the floor of which was set

the cruiser's lower space-door.

In the long room all our crew was gathered now, with Jhul Din at their

head, a hundred odd in number, and a strange enough aggregation they

were, drawn as they were from the far-different races of the galaxy's

peopled stars. Octopus-beings from Vega, great plant-men from Capella,

spider-shapes from Mizar--these and a score or more of differing

forms and shapes stood before me, listening in disciplined silence as

I briefly explained our plan. About us the walls were wrenching and

cracking fearfully, but when I had finished those before me raised

a fierce shout, and then each of us was hastily climbing into the

emergency space-suits which were kept always in all interstellar ships

in case outside repairs to it were necessary in mid-space.

A moment more and we all stood attired in the hermetically sealed,

clumsy-looking suits of thick, flexible metal, with head-pieces of

metal in which were transparent vision-plates. As we donned them each

pressed the button which set the little air-generators inside each suit

pouring forth their supply of fresh air and purifying the breathed air;

and then, with a swift glance around that showed each in his suit, I

motioned to Jhul Din and at once the big Spican pressed the stud in the

wall that sent the round space-door in the floor sliding open.

We could not feel through our insulating suits the tremendous cold that

instantly invaded the ship, but we heard plainly the swift, terrific

swish of air about us as it rushed out of the ship into the mighty void

outside. Now, looking down through the open door, we could see a score

of feet beneath the broad metal back of the great oval ship, still

racing on unsuspectingly beneath us. I turned back to the crew about

me, saw that each had gripped one of the metal bars that were to be our

only weapons in this attempt, since the use of rays would destroy the

ship beneath, which was our only hope of life. Then, reaching forth

again to the switch-case on the wall, Jhul Din at my motion threw off

the cruiser's gravity-control, so that the attraction-plates built into

the floor beneath us, which pulled us always downward and enabled us

to walk upright and normally inside the cruiser, no longer pulled us.

Instead, though, we were being pulled down now by the gravitational

force of the racing ship beneath and a step through the open door would

send any of us hurtling down toward that ship.

Now I gave one last glance around, even while the cruiser's walls

cracked terribly again, and then swung myself over the edge of the

opening in the floor, hanging by my hands from it and swinging there in

the infinite void of interstellar space a score of feet above the oval

ship's broad metal back. It seemed, that moment that I swung there,

a time of endless length, and surely never before had any hung thus

between two ships racing on through the void. Then, as another cracking

roar came from the walls about me, I loosed my hold upon the edge and

hurtled down through empty space toward the back of the ship below.

Down, down--that fall seemed endless as I rushed down through space,

but unimpeded as I was by air-resistance it was but an instant before

I had slammed down on the ship's broad back, lying motionless for an

instant and then rising carefully to a sitting position. Just above me

hung our racing cruiser, the opening in its bottom directly overhead,

and in another moment Korus Kan had followed me, striking the ship's

back beside me while I gripped him and held him tightly. Then came

one of the crew, and another, and another, until in a moment the last

of them was dropping down among us, Jhul Din alone remaining above.

He stepped toward the opening, to lower himself and drop down to us

likewise, but even as he did so I saw the great walls of the cruiser

above collapsing and buckling inward as they gave at last. I motioned

frantically to Jhul Din as the walls collapsed about him, saw him give

one startled glance around, and then as the cruiser's sides crumpled up

about him he ran forward and leapt cleanly through the opening in the

floor, hurtling down toward us and striking full in our midst, just as

the crumpled cruiser above, the power of its generators gone with its

collapse, jerked sharply out of sight toward the crimson sun behind,

hurtling away from us a twisted wreck of metal.

* * * * *

It was with something of a tightness in my throat that I saw the wreck

of our familiar, faithful ship drive away from us, but I turned toward

our own desperate situation. We were clinging to the back of the great

oval ship as it drove on toward the Cancer cluster, with above and all

about us the blackness of the void, and the galaxy's flaming suns.

Ahead shone the gathered suns of the great cluster, and I knew that we

must capture the ship soon if at all; so now, half creeping and half

walking, we made our way along the great ship's back toward the round

space-door set midway along that back. In a moment we were clustered

about it, and found it closed tightly from within, as I had expected.

Instantly, though, we set to work on it with the metal bars and tools

we had brought with us, drilling down through the thick metal of the

door while we clung, like a hundred odd tiny mites, upon the mighty

ship's back as it flashed on and on.

What might lie in the ship beneath, what manner of beings might these

terrible invaders be, we could not even guess, but it was our one

chance to penetrate inside, and frantically we worked. Within moments

more we had drilled through in a dozen places, were swinging aside the

great bolts that held the door closed inside, and then were sliding it

open and dropping swiftly down inside. We heard a little rush of air

outward as the door opened, and knew that this ship was inhabited by

air-breathing beings, at least, and then we found ourselves in the room

beneath the space-door, a bare little vestibule chamber in whose side

was a single square door.

Before opening this, however, we closed the round space-door above us,

plugging the holes we had drilled in it by driving in sections of metal

bar, and then I turned toward the door in the wall, felt carefully

around it, and finally pressed a small white plate inset beside it, at

which it slid silently aside. We stepped through it, bars raised ready

for action. We were in a corridor, a long corridor apparently running

the length of the great oval ship, but quite empty for the moment. The

throbbing of great generators was loud in our ears, a throbbing much

like that in our own ships but with another unfamiliar beating sound

mingled with it. Silently we gazed about, then began to make our way

down the corridor toward the ship's front end, toward the pilot room

at its nose, stopping first to divest ourselves silently of the heavy

space-suits, and then starting on.

Now we had come to an open door in the corridor's side, and peering

cautiously through it we saw inside a long room holding a score or

more of great, cylindrical mechanisms from which arose the throbbing

and beating of the oval ship's operation. About these mechanisms were

moving some two dozen of the ship's occupants, and as our eyes fell

upon them we all but gasped aloud, so utterly strange and alien in

shape were they even to us, who held strange shapes enough in our own

gathering. Many and many a strange race had we of the Patrol seen in

our long journeys through the galaxy, but all these were familiar and

commonplace beside the shapes that moved in the room before us. For

they were serpent-people!

Serpent-people! Long, slender shapes of wriggling pale flesh, each

perhaps ten feet in length and a foot in diameter, without arms or

legs of any kind, writhing swiftly from place to place snake-like,

and coiling an end of their strange bodies about any object which

they wished to grip. Each end of the long, cylindrical bodies was cut

squarely off, as it were, and in one such flat end of each were the

only features--a pair of bulging, many-lensed eyes like those of an

insect, big and glassy and unwinking, and a small black opening below

that was the only orifice for their breathing. These were the beings

who had come out of outer space to attack our universe! These were the

beings who had annihilated the galaxy's fleet and were preparing now to

seize the galaxy itself!

I turned from my horror-stricken contemplation of them to Jhul Din and

Korus Kan, close behind me. "The pilot room!" I whispered. "We'll make

for it--get the ship's controls!"

They nodded silently, and silently we stole past the open door and down

the long corridor, toward the door at its end that we knew must lead

into the pilot room at the ship's nose. Past other doors we crept,

all of them fortunately closed, and as we stole on toward the door at

the corridor's end I began to hope that at last our luck had turned.

But ironically, even as I hoped, the door at the corridor's end, not

a score of feet ahead, slid suddenly aside, and out of it, out of the

pilot room beyond it, came one of the writhing serpent-creatures. It

stopped short on seeing us, then gave vent to a strange, hissing cry,

a high, sibilant call utterly strange to my ears, but at the sound of

which the doors all along the corridor behind us slid swiftly open,

while through them scores of the serpent-beings writhed out, and upon

us!

"The pilot room!" I yelled, above the sudden hissing cries of the

serpent-creatures and the shouts of our own crew. "Head for it, Jhul

Din!"

Down the corridor we leapt, and out from the pilot room there came

to meet us a half-dozen of the serpent-creatures, while one remained

inside at the controls still. Then they were rushing toward us, and

as they reached us were coiling about us, endeavoring to crush us by

encircling us with their bodies and coiling with terrific power about

us. As they did so, though, our own metal bars were crashing down among

them, sending them to the corridor's floor in masses of crushed flesh

as we plunged on toward the pilot room. Now we were through them,

had crushed them before us, and were leaping through the door, the

single serpent-creature inside wheeling to face us. Before he could

spring upon us, though, Jhul Din had lifted him high above his head

and then had flung him far down the corridor, where he struck against

the wall and fell crushed to the floor. Then Korus Kan was leaping to

the controls, swiftly scanning them and then twisting and shifting

them, heading the racing ship around in a great curve, away from the

Cancer cluster ahead and back in toward the galaxy's center, while

Jhul Din and I now sprang back down the corridor to where our crew was

struggling fiercely with the hordes of serpent-creatures rushing up

from all parts of the ship.

Down that corridor, and down another, through rooms and halls and

twisting stairways, down through all the great ship the battle raged,

the serpent-creatures leaping and coiling about us with the courage of

despair while we strode among them, metal bars smashing down in great

strokes, mowing them down before us. Despite their overpowering numbers

they were no match for us in such hand-to-hand fighting, and they dared

not use ray-tubes, like ourselves, lest they destroy their own ship

about them. So we forced them on, ever sending them down in crushed,

lifeless masses, as they gradually gave way before us.

I will not tell all that happened in that red time of destruction, but

quarter there could be none for these things that had come to attack

our universe, that had destroyed our comrade ships in thousands; and so

within a half-hour more the last of the serpent-creatures had perished

and we were masters of the ship, though but a scant two score of us

were left to operate it, so fierce had been the battle.

* * * * *

Our first action was to clear the ship of dead, casting them loose into

space through the space-doors; then Jhul Din and I made our way back

into the pilot room, where Korus Kan was holding the ship to a course

inward into the galaxy. The controls, he had found, were very much

like those of our own cruisers, but the great generators, as we found,

were much different. Instead of setting up a vibration in the ether to

fling the ship forward, as in our own cruisers, they projected a force

which caused a shifting of the ether itself about the ship, forming a

small, ceaseless ether-current which moved at colossal speed, bearing

the ship with it. The speed could thus be raised or lowered at will by

controlling the amount of force projected, and as the general nature

of the generators was clear enough the remaining engineers of our crew

took charge of them while we fled on into the galaxy.

"We'll head straight for Canopus," I said, indicating the great white

star at the galaxy's center far ahead. "We'll report at once to the

Council of Suns; our capture of this ship may be of use to them."

While I spoke Korus Kan had opened the power-control wider, and now

our newly captured prize was racing through the void toward the mighty

central white sun at thousands upon thousands of light-speeds, though

I knew that even this terrific velocity, all that we dared use inside

the galaxy, was but a fraction of what the ship was capable of in

outer space. Glancing about the pilot room, I endeavored for a time to

penetrate the purpose of some of the things about me, as we flashed

on. Above our window, as in our own cruiser, was a great space-chart,

functioning similar to ours, I had no doubt, and showing the dot that

was our ship flashing on between the sun-circles that lay about us.

There was a device for flashing vari-colored signals, also, such as

space-ships inside the galaxy use to show their identity on landing.

There was, too, a cabinet containing a great mass of rolls of thin,

flexible metal, inscribed with strange, precise little characters that

I guessed formed the written language of the serpent-people, though

they were beyond all comprehension to me. I turned back to the windows

about me, gazing forth into the vista of thronging suns and worlds that

lay all about us now as we flashed on into the galaxy toward Canopus.

From all the suns about us, our space-chart showed, great masses of

interstellar ships were also flashing inward into the galaxy, the first

exodus of the galaxy's people from the outer suns and worlds, driven

inward by the fear of these mighty invaders from the outer void who had

already destroyed the galaxy's fleet, and were preparing now to grasp

all our universe. Far behind us I could see the great ball of suns that

was the Cancer cluster, glowing in supreme splendor at the galaxy's

edge, and I knew that even now, on the worlds of those thronging suns,

the great fleet of the invading serpent-creatures would be settling,

would be moving to and fro, wiping out the races that thronged those

worlds, wrecking and annihilating the civilizations upon them and

making of all the suns and worlds of the great cluster a base for their

future attacks upon and conquest of the galaxy. Could we, in any way,

save ourselves from that conquest? It seemed hopeless, and now, weary

as we were with crushing fatigue from the swift succession of events

that had crowded upon us in the last few hours, since our discovery

of the invading swarm's approach, it was with a dull despair that I

watched Canopus enlargening ahead as we flashed on toward it.

On between the galaxy's thronging suns we raced, our vast speed

carrying us through them and through the swarming, panic-driven ships

about them before they could glimpse us. Onward, inward, we flashed,

veering here and there to avoid some star's far-swinging planets,

dipping or rising to keep clear of the masses of traffic that

were jamming the space-lanes leading inward, racing on at the same

unvarying, tremendous velocity while we three in the pilot room, and

the remainder of our crew beneath, strove to remain awake and conscious

against the utterly crushing oppression of fatigue that pressed down

upon us. At last we were flashing past the last of the suns between

us and Canopus, and the great white central sun lay full before us, a

gigantic globe of blazing, brilliant light. As we leapt toward it I saw

Korus Kan gradually decreasing our speed, our ship slackening in its

tremendous flight as we slanted down toward the planets of the great

sun, and toward the inmost planet that was the center of the galaxy's

government.

Down, down--our speed was dropping by hundreds of light-speeds each

moment, now, as we sped down through the terrific glare of the vast

white sun toward its inmost world. As we shot downward I saw that Jhul

Din, now, was lying on the floor beside me, overcome by the fatigue

that crowded down upon me also; only Korus Kan, of all of us, holding

to the controls untiring and unaffected, the metal body in which his

living organs and intelligence were cased being untrammeled by any

weariness. Beneath us now lay the great masses of traffic, countless

swarms of swirling ships, that had fled in to Canopus from the outer

suns at the invaders' attack, and as they glimpsed our great oval craft

these swarms broke wildly from before us. They took us for a raiding

enemy ship, we knew, but down between them unheedingly we flashed,

heading low across the surface of the great planet, still at tremendous

speed.

Moments more and there loomed far ahead and beneath the colossal tower

of the Council of Suns, toward which we were heading. By then I felt

all consciousness and volition beginning to leave me, as an utter

drowsy weariness overcame me, and I realized but dimly that Korus

Kan was slanting the ship down toward the great tower, until abruptly

there came from him a sharp cry. With an effort I raised my gaze and

saw that from below, as we sped downward, three long, shining shapes

were arrowing up to meet us. They were cruisers of our own Interstellar

Patrol, and as they flashed upward there suddenly leapt from them a

half-dozen brilliant shafts of the crimson rays of death, stabbing

straight toward us!

_5. For the Federated Suns!_

Half conscious as I was, it seemed to me in that dread instant that the

whole scene about us was but a strange, set tableau, racing ships and

flashing rays frozen motionless in mid-air. Then another cry from Korus

Kan jarred me back to realization.

"The signal!" he cried. "Flash the signal of the Interstellar Patrol

before they annihilate us!"

At his cry a flash of realization crossed my darkened brain, and I

understood that the Patrol cruisers beneath had recognized our craft

as an enemy ship, that Korus Kan himself dared not leave the controls

even for an instant to flash from the signal our identity. With a last

summons of my waning strength I rose, staggered blindly across the room

toward the switch, and then, as from beneath the crimson rays flashed

blindingly toward us, grasped the switch and swept it around the dial,

flashing from our ship's nose the succession of colored lights that

proclaimed us of the Patrol. I felt myself sinking to the floor, then,

seemed to see the three uprushing ships swerving by us at the last

moment as they glimpsed the signal, and then as Korus Kan sent the

ship slanting down and over the ground to land I felt a bumping shock,

seemed to sink still deeper into the drowsy darkness, then knew no more.

How long it was that I had lain in that darkness, in a stupor of sleep

from the weariness of our hours of rushing action, I could not guess

when next I opened my eyes. I was lying upon a thick mat on a low metal

couch, in a small room lit by a flood of white sunlight that poured

through a tall opening in its side. On a similar couch beside me lay

Jhul Din, just waking like myself; and for a moment we stared about

in bewilderment. Then the sunlight, the brilliant pure white glare

of light that could never be mistaken for the light of any star but

Canopus, gave me my clue, and I remembered all--our discovery of the

approaching swarm while patrolling the galaxy's outer edge, our flight

inward and the great battle, our capture of the enemy ship and our

escape. I jumped to my feet, and as I did so Korus Kan came into the

room.

"You're awake!" he exclaimed, as his eyes fell on Jhul Din and me,

standing. "I thought you would be, by now; the Council of Suns is

waiting for us."

"The Council!" I repeated, and he nodded quickly as we strode with him

to the door.

"Yes. We've been here for many hours, Dur Nal--you and Jhul Din

sleeping--and in those hours the Council has been in almost constant

session, deliberating this invasion of our universe."

* * * * *

While he spoke we had been traversing a narrow, gleaming-walled

corridor, and now turned at right-angles into another, strode down

it and through a mighty, arched doorway, and were in the tremendous

amphitheater of the Council Hall, a room familiar to all in the galaxy,

the vast circle of its floor covered now by the thousands of seated

members. It was toward the central platform that we strode, where Serk

Haj, the present Council Chief, a great, black-winged bat-figure from

Deneb, stood before the vast assembly, behind him on the platform

the score of seated figures who were the heads of the different

departments of the galaxy's government. It was toward seats among these

that he motioned us, as we reached the platform, and as we took our

place in them I glanced about the great hall, interested in spite of

the cosmic gravity of the moment. It was with something of a leap in

my heart that I saw, among all those dissimilar thousands of strange

shapes from the galaxy's farthest stars, the single human figure of the

representative of my own little solar system. Then, as Serk Haj went on

with the address to the assembly which our entrance had interrupted, I

turned my attention to his words.

"And so," he was saying, "it is clear to you how these strange invaders

from outer space, these serpent-creatures from outside our universe,

have been able to annihilate all but a few ships of our great fleet, to

settle upon the worlds of the great Cancer cluster as a base, to set

up clear around the edge of our galaxy the watchful patrol of their

ships that our scouts report. All this they have done with a fleet of

a few thousand ships, have shattered our galaxy's defenses and sent

wild panic flaming across that galaxy; yet these few thousand ships, as

we have now learned, are but the vanguard of the countless thousands

that are soon to follow, to pour down upon us in colossal, irresistible

hordes!

"It was through the feat of Dur Nal, here, and his companions, that

we have learned this. You have heard how, after the great battle, he

and his party were able to do what never before was done in all the

annals of interstellar warfare, to board and capture an enemy ship in

mid-space and bring it back, intact, to Canopus. That ship has been

thoroughly examined by the best of the galaxy's scientists, and in its

pilot room was found a collection of metallic sheets or rolls covered

with strange characters, the written records of these serpent-invaders.

Upon those records for hours our greatest lexicologists have worked,

and finally they have been able to decipher them, and have found in

them the facts of the history and purposes of these strange invaders

from outer space.

"These invaders, as the records show, are inhabitants of one of the

distant universes of stars like our own, lying millions of light-years

from our own in the depths of infinite outer space. So far are these

mighty galaxies like our own that they appear to us but faint patches

of light in the blackness of space, yet we recognize them as universes

like ours, and have given them names of our own, calling one the

Andromeda universe, and another the Triangulum universe, and so on.

The universe of these serpent-creatures, though, although one of the

nearest to our own, has never been seen or suspected by us because it

is invisible from our distance, being not a living universe of flaming

stars like our own and the ones we see, but a darkened, dying universe.

"It is a universe in which the thronging stars have followed nature's

inexorable laws and have darkened and died, one by one, a great

universe passing into death and darkness and decay as our own and

all others, some time in the far future, will pass. For eons upon

it had dwelt the great masses of the serpent-people, thronging its

countless worlds, and as their suns began to fail them, one by one,

as their universe swept toward its final darkness and death, they

saw that it was necessary for them to migrate to another universe

unless they wished to pass also into death. So they constructed great

space-ships which were able to travel at millions of light-speeds, by

causing an ether-shift about the ship; space-ships in which it would

be possible to do what never had another done, to cross the vast gulf

between universes. Five thousand of these, when finished, they sent

out with serpent-crews and death-beam armament as an advance party

which was to locate a universe satisfactory for their races and then

attack it, gaining a foothold upon it while the rest of the countless

serpent-hordes would build a still mightier fleet of tens of thousands

of ships, which would transport all their great hordes to the universe

they meant to conquer.

"So the five thousand ships drove out from the dying universe into

the void, toward the Andromeda universe, the nearest to their own.

Down they poured upon it in swift attack, but up to meet them rose the

people of the Andromeda universe, a single race ruling all of it, whose

science and power were so great that with mighty weapons they drove

back and defeated the five thousand attacking ships, forcing them back

into outer space again. It was clear that for the present the Andromeda

universe could not be conquered, so they turned at a right angle, and

after flashing a message by some means of etheric communication to the

masses of their peoples in the dying universe, struck out through the

infinite void in a new direction, toward our own universe.

"Across the void they came, toward our universe, and rushed in upon it

after the long days of their tremendous flight through space, met and

annihilated our own great fleet at the galaxy's edge, and have settled

upon the Cancer cluster, gaining the foothold they desired. Soon from

their dying universe will come their vast main fleet with all their

hordes, and with a mighty weapon which the records mention as now being

constructed in the dying universe, a weapon to annihilate all life

on our worlds with terrific swiftness. They will come, in all their

masses, and when they have annihilated the races of the Federated Suns

and hold all our galaxy in their grasp will then sail back with renewed

power to pour down upon the Andromeda universe and conquer it also.

A cosmic plague of conquest and destruction, creeping through the

infinite void from universe to universe!"

Serk Haj was silent a moment, and all in the great room were silent, a

silence such as surely none ever experienced before. I was listening

tensely, Jhul Din and Korus Kan beside me, but no whisper broke that

stillness until the Council Chief's voice went calmly on.

"Doom creeps upon us," he said, "yet there is still one chance to stay

that doom. We know that before attacking us the serpent-creatures

attacked the Andromeda universe and were repulsed, that they plan to

return to that attack after they have conquered us. So if we could

send a messenger across the terrific void to the Andromeda universe,

to tell its peoples of the serpent-creatures' attack upon us and their

intention to invade the Andromeda universe once more, after conquering

us, there is a chance that those peoples would come to our aid, with

the powerful weapons with which they have already once repulsed the

serpent-creatures, and would help us to crush these invaders before all

their resistless hordes can pour down on our galaxy. It is a chance--a

chance only--but on that chance rests the fate of our universe!

"This chance, a chance to seek the help that may save us, has been

given to us by Dur Nal and his companions, in their capture of the

enemy ship in mid-space; for this captured ship, with its colossal

speed, can do what none of ours can do: it can cross the mighty void

that lies between us and the Andromeda universe, and carry an appeal

for help to that universe. The captured ship has been thoroughly

studied by our scientists, for we plan to build a great fleet of others

with mechanisms like it, to help in crushing these invaders whom we can

not crush alone. A special crew of picked engineers and fighters, from

various of our stars, has been selected for it, and now waits in it

for the start of this great flight through the void that they are to

make for our galaxy. The command of it, though, can go only to the one

who captured it, to Dur Nal, who was first to warn us of the oncoming

peril, and to his lieutenants, Jhul Din and Korus Kan!"

With the words we three snapped to our feet, the great assembly rising

likewise in their excitement, and now Serk Haj turned to face us.

"Dur Nal," he said, steadily, "it is not for me to exhort you and your

friends to do now your best, who have done always your best. If you

can break through the enemy's patrol around the galaxy's edge, can

cross the mighty void which never yet has any of our galaxy crossed,

and can carry to the Andromeda universe our appeal for help, it may be

that you will save us all--it may be that you will save the races and

civilizations of all the Federated Suns from conquest and annihilation

and death. To you three, who have spent your lives in the service of

the Federated Suns, I need say no other word."

We saluted, and there was a moment of death-like silence, until I

spoke. "We start at once!" I said, simply.

* * * * *

The next moment we three were striding down the broad aisle across the

mighty hall, between the thousands of members who, still in the grip

of that strange silence, watched us go, the one chance of our universe

with us. Out of the great hall we strode, and down the big corridor,

out of the great tower into the white glare of Canopus' light, and

toward the long, gleaming oval shape of our waiting ship. Inside it our

crew awaited us, a full eight score of strange, dissimilar shapes from

every quarter of the galaxy, among them the two score who had been of

my cruiser's crew and had helped capture this ship. Swiftly I gave to

them our first orders, heard the space-doors clanging as we ascended

to the pilot room, and then as Korus Kan stepped to the controls heard

the mingled throbbing and beating of the great generators beneath.

I gave a brief signal, and Korus Kan gently opened the mighty ship's

controls, its nose lifting now as it shot smoothly upward. Past us

now from beneath there rushed up two cruisers of the Patrol, speeding

up ahead of us and flashing signals that cleared swiftly from before

us the masses of swarming traffic above, that swept hastily to either

side as our long, grim ship drove up and outward. Up, up--and then we

were clear of the last of them, our escorting Patrol cruisers dropping

behind us now and turning back as with rapidly mounting speed we shot

out from the great planet and upward, mighty Canopus blazing full

behind us now, as we flashed out again from it, out with our velocity

increasing by leaps and bounds, out toward the Cancer cluster once

more, toward the galaxy's edge.

With the passing minutes our generators were throbbing faster and

faster, and we were leaping on through the galaxy at a speed that

equaled or exceeded that of our flight inward. Suns were flashing by

us on either side now, at a rate that was an index to our appalling

speed, but still we flashed on with greater and greater speed, racing

out between the thronging suns of the galaxy toward its edge, the great

ball of suns of the Cancer cluster expanding before us as we raced on

in its direction. On--on--until the mighty cluster lay full to our

right, until we were flashing past it, the blackness of outer space

stretching ahead, and in that far-flung blackness the dim little patch

of light that was the Andromeda universe. We were passing the mighty

cluster, now, heading straight out into the black abyss, and my heart

hammered with excitement as we flashed on. Could we pass the patrol of

enemy ships around the galaxy's edge without a challenge, even? Could

we--but suddenly there was a low exclamation from Korus Kan, and I

turned to see, racing up beside us at our left, a close-massed squadron

of five great oval ships!

They had glimpsed us on their space-charts, we knew, and now were

flashing beside us through space at a speed the same as our own,

drawing nearer toward us while from their white-lit pilot rooms their

serpent-pilots inspected us. A moment I held my breath, as they flashed

on at our side, peering toward us; then, apparently satisfied that our

great oval craft was but one of their own fleet, they began to drop

behind, to turn and resume their patrol. I breathed a great sigh, but

the next moment caught my breath again, for the foremost of the five

ships, as it dropped behind, had paused at our side, had veered a

little closer as though still unsatisfied. Closer it came, and closer,

until the serpent-creatures in its pilot room were clear to our eyes,

as it and the ships behind it raced on with ourselves through space.

Then suddenly from that foremost ship a signal of brilliant light

flashed to those behind it, and at once all five drove straight toward

us!

"They've seen us!" shouted Jhul Din. "They know we're not of their own

fleet!"

But as he shouted I had leapt to the order-tube, had cried into it a

swift command, and then as the five ships veered in toward us there

leapt from our vessel's sides long, swift shafts of crimson light,

the deadly red rays with which our captured ship had been equipped at

Canopus, narrow brilliant shafts that touched the two foremost of those

five racing ships and annihilated them even as they sprang toward us.

The other three were leaping on, though, their death-beams reaching

like great fingers of ghostly light through the void toward us, and I

knew that we could not hope to escape them by flight, since they were

as swift as our own craft; so in a moment I made decision, and shouted

to Korus Kan to head our ship about.

Around we swept, in one great lightning curve, and then were rushing

straight back upon the three racing ships. Into and between them we

flashed, death-beams and red rays stabbing thick through the void in

the instant that we passed them. I saw one of the great pale beams

slice down through the rear end of our ship, heard shouts from beneath

as those of our crew in that end were wiped out of existence, and then

we were past, were turning swiftly in space and flashing back outward

again, and saw that two of the three ships before us were visible only

as great crimson flares, the other ship hanging motionless for the

moment as though stunned by the destruction of its fellows.

"Four gone!" yelled Jhul Din, as we flashed toward the last of the five

ships.

That last ship, though, paused only a moment as we raced toward it,

and then suddenly flashed away into the void to the right, vanishing

instantly from sight as it raced in flight toward the Cancer cluster.

We had destroyed and routed the squadron that had challenged us, had

broken through the enemy's great patrol! Korus Kan was opening our

power-controls to the utmost, and now the throbbing and beating of the

great generators beneath was waxing into a tremendous, thrumming drone,

as we shot outward into space, the Cancer cluster falling behind us as

we flashed out at a tremendous and still steadily mounting speed.

Out--out--into the vast black vault of sheer outer space that lay

stretched before and about us now, the awful velocity of our great

craft increasing by tens of thousands, by hundreds of thousands of

light-speeds, as we shot out into the untrammeled void. Behind us the

mighty, disk-like mass of flaming stars that was our universe was

contracting in size each moment, dwindling and diminishing, but before

us there glowed out in the vast blackness misty little patches of

light, universes of suns inconceivably remote from our own. Strongest

among them glowed a single light-patch, full before us, and it was on

it that our eyes were fixed as our ship at utmost speed plunged on. It

was the Andromeda universe, and we were flashing out into the mighty

void of outer space toward it at a full ten million light-speeds, to

seek the help which alone could save our universe from doom!