I saw that he was right, and that the two universes, that of Andromeda
and this dim, dying one, lay comparatively close to each other, and
at almost equal distances from our own, the two forming the base of a
long, narrow triangle of which our own universe was the apex. Together
we gazed toward that dim flicker of light, in a thoughtful silence. We
knew, even as we gazed, what great preparations were going on in that
dying universe for the conquest of our own galaxy, what mighty efforts
the serpent-races there were making, to complete their vast fleet
and the strange, huge weapon which the records we had captured had
mentioned, so that they could flash through the void to pour down on
our galaxy. The knowledge held us wrapped in thought as our great ship
raced on, still holding to its tremendous utmost velocity, rocking and
swaying a little as it plunged through the vast ether-currents which
swirled about us here in outer space.
Gradually, as we two stood in silence with our great craft speeding
on, I became aware that during the last few minutes the air inside
the pilot room had become perceptibly warmer, and that its warmth was
still increasing. I glanced at the dial that registered the output of
our heat-generators, but it was steady at its accustomed position; yet
with each moment the warmth was increasing, until within a few minutes
more the heat about us had become decidedly uncomfortable. Korus Kan,
too, had noticed it, and had now swung backward the control of the
heat-generators; yet still the warmth increased, the heated air in the
pilot room rapidly becoming unbearable. I turned to the Antarian, fully
alarmed now, but as I did so the door snapped open and Jhul Din burst
up into the pilot room.
"What's happening to the ship?" he cried. "Its inner walls are getting
almost too hot to touch!"
In stunned surprize we gazed at each other, our heating-mechanisms
turned completely off now, yet the inside-temperature dial's arrow was
still moving steadily forward! The thing was beyond all reason, we
knew, and for an instant we stood in amazement, the heat increasing
still about us. Then suddenly Jhul Din pointed upward toward the
massed dials above the controls, his arm quivering.
"Look!" he cried. "The outside-temperature dial!"
Swiftly we raised our own eyes toward it, the dial upon which was shown
the temperature outside the ship. It should have shown absolute zero,
we knew, as always in the infinite cold of empty space. But now it did
not, and our eyes widened as we stared at it, in utter astonishment and
fear. _For it registered a temperature of thousands of degrees in the
empty void about us!_
"Heat!" I cried. "Heat in empty outer space! It's unthinkable!"
Unthinkable it was; yet, even as we stood and stared, the arrow on the
outside-temperature was still creeping steadily forward, showing a
swiftly increasing heat outside, while the air inside had become all
but unbreathable, parching to the lungs. At the same moment a faint
light began to appear about us, a dim-red glow that was intensifying
with each moment that we raced onward, and as we wheeled toward the
windows we saw, in the blackness of space before us, a great, faintly
glowing region of red light ahead, stretching across the heaven before
us. Ever stronger that crimson glow was growing as we raced on, the
heat about us mounting with it, and from beneath came the cries of fear
of our crew as they too glimpsed the awful region of heat and light
through which we now were racing.
I knew that not much longer could the heat about us increase thus
if our ship and ourselves were to survive, yet steadily the arrows
on the temperature-dials were moving forward, and as more and more
of the awful heat outside penetrated through the insulation of our
heat-resistant walls I felt my brain turning dizzily, saw big Jhul
Din stagger and sway against the wall, and saw Korus Kan, the heat
penetrating through his metal body even more than through our own,
slumping sidewise across the controls as he was overcome by it, only
half conscious. I sprang to his side, despite my own dizziness and
parching throat and lungs, grasped the controls and held our ship
straight onward, since all about us the vast glow of crimson light and
heat stretched, encircling us and beating upon us as we flashed onward.
No flame there was, nor incandescent gas, nor solid burning matter of
any kind, nothing but a titanic region of brilliant crimson light,
without visible source of any kind, glowing with terrific heat there in
the emptiness of outer space.
* * * * *
The glow about us was becoming more brilliant with each moment that we
raced on, and as the heat outside and inside increased still more I saw
Jhul Din fling open the pilot room's door in a vain search for cooler
air; heard from beneath a rumbling, ominous thumping and cracking, as
our heat-seared walls began to warp in the terrible temperature to
which they were being subjected. Far ahead in the awful region of heat
and light through which we were speeding I glimpsed now a deeper spot
of crimson light in the great red glow, and as we raced on toward it
I saw that it was the center of all the great outpouring of red light
and of heat, since it was all but blinding in its brilliance, while our
dials showed a temperature mounting each moment that we neared it.
"It's the center of the whole thing!" cried Jhul Din, staggering toward
me and then slumping down to the floor, overcome. "Keep the ship clear
of it!" he shouted, collapsing as he did so, while beside me I saw
Korus Kan, completely unconscious, neither the great crustacean Spican
nor the metal-bodied Antarian possessing my own resistance to the heat
that now was smothering us, though I too knew that not much longer
could I hold to the controls.
Hold to them I did, though, but half conscious now myself; then
as there flamed dead ahead the heart of the whole great inferno,
a blazing area of brilliant crimson light that dazzled me, its
terrific heat pouring full down upon our plunging ship, I swung the
controls sidewise, swerving our craft to the left and around the great
heat-region's fiery heart. Along its side we flashed, our ship plunging
and reeling now as it shot through ether-currents that must have been
of unparalleled size and speed, but even in that darkness that was
stealing over my senses I could see that in that hell of light and
heat to our right there was still no core of matter, nothing but light
and heat and space. Full beside us it flamed as we shot past it, our
rocking ship's sides still grating and cracking terribly beneath the
heat that beat upon them, racing past that awful glare of crimson light
and heat that was like a colossal forge at which some mighty workman
beat out flaming suns, blazing in terrific intensity and dimensions
there in the void between universes.
On we raced, while I strove with all my waning strength to hold the
ship, bucking and swaying as it was, clear of the fiery inferno to
our right, and then it was dropping behind, the brilliant crimson
light and terrible heat about us lessening a little as we shot by it.
Moments more and it had dwindled to a deeper spot of light in the great
red-glowing region to our rear, and then as we flashed still onward at
our utmost speed the last of the light and heat about us were passing;
so that a moment later, with heat-mechanisms again switched on, we were
flashing again through the cold black void as before. With the passing
of the overpowering heat the cracking of the ship's sides had ceased,
and Korus Kan and Jhul Din were staggering to their feet, consciousness
returning with the cooler air. Together we stared back, to where only a
swiftly vanishing little glow of faint red light in the darkness behind
gave evidence of the hell of heat and light through which we had just
come.
"Heat and light in the void of outer space!" I cried. "The thing's
impossible--and yet we came through it!"
Korus Kan had been gazing back with us, but now he turned at my
exclamation, shook his head. "Not impossible," he said quickly. "That
heat and that light we came through were not generated like the usual
heat and light of burning suns--they were generated in empty space
by the ether itself!" And as we stared blankly at him he quickly
explained himself. "You know that heat and light are but vibrations of
the ether of various frequencies, just as are radio-active or chemical
rays, and the electro-magnetic waves we use for speech and signaling.
Highest of all in frequency are those electro-magnetic waves; next in
order of frequency come heat waves; next the red light-vibrations,
and down the various colors of light to the lower-frequency violet
light vibrations; and below these, lowest of all, the radio-active
or chemical rays. Well, our scientists have long known that various
of these ether-vibrations have been set up in the ether of outside
space by the collision of great ether-currents. By those collisions
are formed sometimes electro-magnetic vibrations, interfering with our
speech-vibrations as static, or sometimes light-vibrations, glowing
without visible source in the heavens and known to us as the zodiacal
light. Here in the void, though, where mighty currents of size and
speed inconceivable must collide, the vibrations set up were in the
frequency-range of heat and of the lower adjoining frequency, that of
red light; so that that region we came through is one where the immense
ether-currents that we plunged through collide and set up a ceaseless
outpouring of heat and light waves there in the ether, in empty space
itself."
I shook my head. "It seems plausible," I said, "yet the reality of
it--that titanic region of awful heat and light----"
"It seems strange enough," he admitted, "but it's really no stranger
than if it had been a great region of static, or----"
A sharp cry from the Spican stabbed through our talk. "The walls!" he
shouted. "They're beginning to glow--look----!"
Startled, we swung about, and then the blood drove from my heart at the
strangeness and awfulness of what we saw; for, engrossed in our talk,
we had not noticed that all in the pilot room about us, walls and floor
and mechanism and controls, was beginning to shine out with a strange,
flickering luminosity, a misty, fluorescent light that with each moment
was waxing in intensity, a quivering, unfamiliar light that seemed to
glow from all in our ship, as it raced swaying on, though outside was
nothing but the same blackness of space as before! Even as we stared
about us, astounded, our own bodies, and especially the metal body of
Korus Kan, had begun to radiate the same lambent light, and then, with
a sudden great leap of my heart, I saw that the edges and corners of
the walls about us were smoothing and rounding a little, crumbling
and disappearing a little as though slowly disintegrating. At the
same moment a strange tingling shook through every atom of my body, a
quivering force that flooded through me with increasing intensity.
Horror-stricken we stood, until from one of the levers beside me an
inch of the handle fell off, a little piece of metal that rattled to
the floor and that was crumbling slowly, disintegrating, even as did
the lever from which it had crumbled off. Then Korus Kan was leaping
toward me, across the glowing pilot room.
"Swerve the ship's course!" he cried, wildly. "_We've run into another
great region of vibrations--radio-active vibrations that will crumble
the ship and all in it to pieces in a few more moments!_"
I grasped the shining levers, swung them sharply sidewise, sent our
craft flashing off at a broad angle to its previous course, but
still about us the glowing light waxed and deepened, and I felt an
infinite nausea overcoming me as through my body surged the floods
of radio-active vibrations from the ether about us that had caused
all matter in our ship to radiate that misty light. With each moment
the shining walls about us seemed crumbling faster, and I knew that
moments more would see the ship's end unless soon we escaped from the
great trap of disintegrating death into which we had ventured. I felt,
too, that not for long could we ourselves stand the impact of these
disintegrating vibrations, felt the tingling that shook my own glowing
flesh increasing in intensity, while all about us, now, tiny bits of
metal were falling from crumbling walls and ceiling and machinery.
Still grasping the controls, though, I held the ship to a course aslant
from our previous one, while my two companions tensed with me over
them, gazing ahead, while from beneath again came wild cries of alarm
as those of our crew, who had already run the gantlet of the enemies'
death-beams and of the great heat-region, saw the new peril that
encompassed us. There came, too, from somewhere in the ship, a great
thump and clang of metal as some one of our mechanisms there broke
loose from its crumbling base, but still we flung onward through the
void, rocking and twisting, and in a moment the terrible tenseness that
gripped us lessened a little as we saw that the glowing of the walls
about us, and of our own bodies, was beginning to wane, as we drew
out of the zone of deadly force. A few more moments of onward flight
and they had vanished altogether, and then I brought the ship back to
its course, heading once more toward the misty light-patch of the
Andromeda universe, while I drew a long breath of relief.
* * * * *
There was a silence of moments before Jhul Din, first of us, found his
voice. "Heat-regions and radio-active force regions!" he exclaimed.
"If more of them lie between us and the Andromeda universe, what's our
chance of getting there?"
Korus Kan shook his head. "We'll get there," he said, "but we'll have
to keep close watch every moment of our flight--there's no way of
telling how thickly scattered these great vibration-regions may lie in
space about us."
A moment more and Jhul Din left us, passing down into the ship's
body to ascertain what damage had been wrought by the great zone of
radio-active force, though we knew that we had escaped from it before
it could seriously damage the ship. And as I now relinquished the
controls to Korus Kan, pausing with him a moment to look out again with
some fearfulness into the black void through which we were racing, it
was with a full realization, at last, of the tremendous perils and
unguessed circumstances that might lie in the vast spaces through which
we must yet flash. Yet as my eyes fell again on the misty-glowing
circle of the Andromeda universe, and the sinister, dimly flickering
mass of the dying universe of the serpent-people, to its right, I felt
my determination steeling again within me.
It was the sight of those two far patches of light ahead, I think, that
held us all to our purpose in the hours, the days, that followed. Long,
strange days they were, when with no sun whatever near us we could
measure time only by the great abysses of space through which our ship
was steadily flashing, computing from those distances and from our
unvarying velocity the passing of the hours. But with each day, with
each hour, we were racing countless billions of miles nearer toward
the Andromeda universe, and toward the goal of our tremendous journey.
On and on we plunged, our prow turned ever toward that misty circle of
light ahead, that was largening and brightening with each hour that we
sped toward it.
Thrice, in those following days, we glimpsed great regions of heat
and crimson light like that through which we first had plunged, and
each time we were able to swerve away from them and detour around them
in time, and so escaped a renewal of our first dread experience of
them. More than once, too, our instruments gave us warning of zones
of radio-active or electrical force near us, and these we gave even a
wider berth than the heat-regions, for these we feared most of all, I
think. Ether-currents and vast ether-maelstroms were about us, too, we
knew, but the tremendous speed of our craft brought us flashing through
those where a slower-moving ship would have perished.
As it was, one danger that had menaced us always in navigation inside
the galaxy, the presence of meteors and meteor-swarms, was lacking
in our flight. Yet I think that almost we would have welcomed their
presence about us, for all their danger, if only for the knowledge that
some other matter besides our ship moved and existed in the mighty void
around us. It was our ship's isolation, the knowledge that all about
it for countless billions upon billions of miles, thousands upon tens
of thousands of light-years, there stretched only the awful regions
of empty space, an ocean of lightless space in which the galaxies of
flaring suns here and there were but tiny islands, that oppressed
us most. Far behind lay our own galaxy, and far ahead the Andromeda
universe; and between universe and universe, an infinitesimally tiny
speck there in the mighty void, our ship raced on and on.
But as we added day after measured day to our flight, as we flashed
nearer and nearer toward the Andromeda universe, it slowly began to
change before us, to wax from a little patch of glowing light to a
larger and brighter patch, and then to a great oval of light that
flamed brilliant in the blackness of space before us, and finally to a
vast disk-shaped mass of stars like our own universe. The disk mass lay
in space with edge toward us, and seen thus, the light of its countless
thronging stars was fused almost into a single waxing glow, but as we
swept nearer and nearer that glow began to resolve itself into the
light of the myriad massed suns of which it was composed. So brightly
flamed those gathering suns in the heavens before us that only with an
effort could we make out, far toward the right, the still faint glow of
the dying universe of the serpent-people, as near to us almost as that
of Andromeda, yet infinitely dim and dead in comparison with it.
* * * * *
Steadily we flashed on, day following day, until when a score of them
had passed we computed ourselves as having traversed two-thirds of
our journey, and could see that ever more swiftly the great universe
of stars ahead was widening across the heavens. On that twentieth day
I spent hours with Jhul Din in our regular inspection of the ship's
mechanism, passing with him through the long room where our engineers,
depleted in number by the death-beam that had sliced through our ship,
tended carefully the mighty generators. Then the Spican and I passed
out of the room, and were proceeding down the long corridor that led
toward the pilot room when there came suddenly from it, ahead of us, a
sharp cry.
We stopped short a moment, then raced down the corridor and burst up
into the pilot room, where Korus Kan turned swiftly from the controls
toward us.
"Ships are approaching from ahead!" he cried, pointing up toward the
big space-chart.
We looked, and saw that even as he had said there moved upon that
chart a half-hundred black dots, in close formation, creeping steadily
downward across the blank chart to meet the upward-creeping dot that
was our ship. In silent amazement we watched, as our craft raced on,
and then saw that as we neared them the fifty ships ahead were slowly
halting, and then beginning to move back toward the Andromeda universe
in the same direction as ourselves. They were allowing us to slowly
overtake them, obviously intending to race beside us at the same speed
as ourselves, toward the Andromeda universe. And as they made that move
Jhul Din uttered an exclamation.
"They must be ships from the Andromeda universe itself!" he cried.
"They've learned of our approach by space-charts of some kind--have
come out to meet us!"
My heart leapt at the thought, for if it were so it would mean the
first success of our mission across the void. Silently we watched, as
our ship's single dot on the chart raced closer and closer toward the
half-hundred dots above it, they moving now at a speed almost equal to
our own. Within moments we would be able to glimpse them, we knew, and
gazed tensely into the blackness of space ahead, toward the Andromeda
universe's flaring suns, as our craft raced on. Moments were passing,
tense moments of silence and watchfulness, and then far ahead we
glimpsed in the void, hardly to be seen against the great glow of the
Andromeda universe, a little mass of light-points that steadily were
largening as we gradually overtook them.
A full fifty of them in sight, they were flashing on in a close
formation, allowing us to overhaul them, changing from mere
light-points into dark, vaguely glimpsed shapes as we drove nearer
toward them. Then at last we had reached them, were driving in among
them as they moved now at the same speed as ourselves, could see their
shapes more clearly as long and _oval_, their front ends white-lit
transparent-walled rooms like our own. Nearer we were flashing to those
before us and about us, and then in those white-lit control rooms I
glimpsed their occupants, slender, writhing pale shapes at sight of
which I cried aloud.
"Serpent-ships!" I cried. "Serpent-ships from the dying universe
ahead! Those back in our galaxy from whom we escaped have warned them
of our coming, by the means of etheric communication their records
mentioned--they know our mission and they've come out to intercept us
here in space!"
Even as I cried out, Korus Kan's hands flashed out to the controls,
but he was an instant too late. For at that same moment the ships
just before us had turned and circled in one swift movement, and were
rushing straight back toward us. I had a flashing glimpse of their
white-lit prows racing toward us through the intense darkness, and
saw with photographic clearness the slender serpent-shapes in those
brilliantly lit pilot rooms, and then the foremost ship loomed suddenly
enormous as it flashed straight toward us. With a sharp cry Korus Kan
drove the controls sidewise to swerve our ship, but before we could
avoid the onrushing craft ahead it was upon us and with a terrific,
thunderous shock had crashed straight into our own racing ship!