7. _The Gates of a Universe_

I think now that it was only that last jerking aside of the controls

by Korus Kan that saved us from utter annihilation in that moment.

For as he moved them our ship swerved sidewise, not enough to avoid

the collision but enough to cause the onrushing ship to strike our own

obliquely along the side instead of head on, and it was that alone

that saved us. The crash shook our great craft like a leaf in a gale,

trembling and reeling there in the black gulf of space and flinging us

all to the pilot room's floor, and for a moment it seemed to us that

our ship had been riven apart. Then, as it steadied, we scrambled to

our feet, just in time to see the ship that had crashed into us reeling

away to the side, a shattered mass of metal, while down upon us from

above and all about the other serpent-ships were swooping.

As Korus Kan sprang back to the controls I leapt to the order-tube,

was on the point of shouting a command to our crew beneath, when down

from the hovering ships above us there dropped around us a dozen or

more of great flexible ropes or loops of gleaming metal, that encircled

our ship like great snares. Within another instant our craft had been

drawn upward by them until it lay securely lashed between two of the

enemy ships, our ray-tubes useless now; since to loose them was but

to perish with the ships that held us. Then another ship was slanting

down above us, and as it hung over us there projected downward from its

lower space-door toward our own upper space-door a hollow tube of metal

of the same diameter as the two space-doors, that attached itself with

a click to our own upper door, forming a hermetically sealed gangway

there between our two ships in space.

Until that moment we had stood motionless in amazement, somewhat

stunned by the suddenness of our ship's capture; then as the space-door

of our ship clanged open above I uttered a cry, sprang out into the

corridor that ran the ship's length, and saw the members of our crew

bursting into that corridor in answer to my cry, even as from the

space-door chamber beside it there writhed out a horde of scores of the

serpent-creatures! Jhul Din and Korus Kan were beside me, now, and with

shouts of fierce anger we rushed upon the masses of serpent-creatures

who still were pouring down from the ship above through the hollow

gangway.

The mêlée that followed was wilder than when we ourselves had captured

this same ship; since though we and all our crew flung ourselves

forward upon the things without hesitation, we were weaponless and

outnumbered by ten to one. As it was, I struck out with all my power at

the hideous, writhing beings, feeling some of them collapse beneath my

wild blows even as they strove to coil about me; saw Korus Kan, with

his triple powerful metal arms, crushing the life from those who leapt

upon him, cool and silent as ever even in that wild din of battle;

glimpsed the great Spican grasping those about him in his tremendous

arms and literally tearing them into fragments as we battled on. But

rapidly the members of our crew who battled about us were going down,

the life crushed from them by the coiling bodies that overwhelmed

us, and then as I strode on I too was gripped from beneath, by a

serpent-creature that had wound itself about my feet, and now pulled me

down.

[Illustration: "We were weaponless and outnumbered ten to one."]

Struggling in the grip of a half-dozen of the alien creatures, I

heard Jhul Din shouting hoarsely, saw him finally pulled from his

feet also by a great mass of the writhing things, and then Korus Kan

and the remainder of our crew were overcome too, and within another

moment all was over. Scores of the serpent-creatures lay dead about

us, but with them lay many of our own crew; not more than a bare score

were left to us now of all our party. Gripped tightly still by the

serpent-creatures, we were thrust down a narrow stair and into an empty

little storeroom beneath the pilot room, in its metal walls but a

single space-window giving a view forward. The door snapped shut as

the last of us were thrust inside, and then our captors had left us,

the lashings that had snared our ship were cast loose by the ships on

either side, and as the humming of the generators waxed loud again our

ship and those about it began to move once more through space.

"They're heading now toward the dying universe!" exclaimed Korus Kan,

gazing through the single window into the black gulf outside. "They're

going to take us there as prisoners!"

But I too, gazing through the window at his side, had seen that our

ship's prow was turning now toward the right, so that ahead now instead

of the great glowing mass of the Andromeda universe there lay the dim,

faintly glowing patch of light that was the serpent-peoples' waning

universe. Toward it now our ship and the ships about us were flashing

at greater and greater speed, and as they hummed on the despair that

had already gripped me deepened. It was not the peril in which we

ourselves lay that affected me, for well I knew that from the moment of

our capture our fate had been sealed, and that our temporary reprieve

from death meant only that some more horrible fate awaited us in the

dying universe. It was that the last chance of our own universe had

vanished with our capture, the last hope to summon from the Andromeda

universe the help that could save our galaxy gone now forever.

In a silence of utter despair I gazed ahead as our ship and those

about it hummed on, while Jhul Din and Korus Kan and all the survivors

of our crew prisoned with us maintained the same despairing silence.

There was no plan for escape, no suggestion of it, even, for well we

knew the impossibility of even winning clear of the room that was our

prison, not to speak of overcoming the hordes of serpent-creatures who

now operated our ship. In a strange apathy of spirit we sat and stood,

hour after hour, speaking little. Our eyes and minds turned only to the

window through which we could see, in the black abyss of space ahead,

the faintly glowing universe of the serpent-people broadening slowly

ahead as our ships raced on at full speed toward it.

* * * * *

A day passed, and that dying universe had grown across a full third

of the vault of space before us, a great, dim-glowing region of

flickering luminescence utterly different from the radiance of the

shining Andromeda universe, that lay now far to our left. On and on the

serpent-ships raced, unceasingly, hour upon hour, until at last on the

third day of our imprisonment their speed began to slacken, the drone

of the great generators falling a little in pitch as they drew near at

last to their galaxy, that had expanded outward now until it seemed to

fill all the heavens before us, so strange a spectacle to our eyes that

almost we forgot our own predicament and despair in contemplation of it.

Full in the heavens before us it lay, a mighty galaxy fully as large

as our own, as the Andromeda universe, but infinitely different, a

galaxy not of life but of death. In all its mighty mass were no flaming

white or blue or yellow suns like those of our own galaxy, no brilliant

young stars surrounded by circling, sun-warmed worlds. Here was only

a vast forest of dead and dying suns, stretched across the heavens,

huge throngs of dark, burned-out stars, cold and black and barren, that

crowded thick upon one another, with here and there a few dying suns

of dark, smoky red, somber crimson stars in the last stages of stellar

evolution. It was with the light of these few alone that the great

mass faintly glowed, an expiring universe in which all light and life

were sinking into darkness and death.

Silent with awe and wonder we watched as our ships drove in toward this

darkening galaxy, and then I began to make out, between us and it, a

strange, constant flicker of blue light that seemed to extend all about

the faint-glowing universe before us. Stronger that flicker was growing

as we sped on toward it, though through it there shone clearly as ever

the light of the crimson suns beyond it. At last we seemed racing

straight into it, and now I saw that it was a colossal globular shell

of flickering blue light, almost invisible, that enclosed within itself

all the mighty, circular mass of the dying universe before us. Our

ships seemed about to flash straight into it, but now turned sharply to

the left, speeding along the great light-barrier's edge. A ship beside

us, though, had turned a little too late and had struck the light-wall

while turning, and as it did so I saw it rebounding back with terrific

force as though in collision with a solid wall, its whole prow crumpled

by the impact. Then, at last, I comprehended the nature of this vast

shell of flickering blue light that enclosed the dying universe.

"It's a vibration-wall!" I cried to my companions. "A great wall of

etheric vibrations enclosing all this universe!"

For I saw now that that was the great barrier's nature. It was a

mighty shell of perpetual vibrations in the ether itself, extending

all about the universe before us, allowing light and electro-magnetic

communication waves to pass through it, unchanged, but excluding and

holding out the vibrations of matter, by meeting them, as I knew

must be the case, with a vibration of equal frequency which opposed

them, reflected them back, forming a barrier more impenetrable than

any of solid matter, yet one all but invisible, extending about all

this mighty universe, excluding from it for all time all matter from

outside. Too, as I was later to learn, the great vibration-wall was

impenetrable to the heat-vibrations, reflecting those of its dying

suns that struck it back into the universe inside. It was for this

purpose that the vast barrier had been erected, as the suns of the

serpent-people failed, to prevent the escape of any of the precious

heat-radiations of their few living suns, and also to place about all

their universe a wall impenetrable to all invaders. Set in the ether

about their universe eons before, the vibrations that made up the great

barrier were perpetual and undying, a vast wall of defense about the

serpent-universe.

We were flashing close along the mighty, flickering barrier's edge,

now, and the speed of our ships slackened swiftly as there loomed far

ahead in space two great, dark bulks starred here and there with points

of white light. Moments more and they had grown to immense size as

we neared them, and now we saw that these were mighty, square-walled

structures of gleaming metal, each a full five thousand feet in length

along each of its four sides, and half again that much in height:

two colossal metal forts that floated motionless there in space, set

directly in the great wall of flickering blue vibrations, and between

which there was a great opening in that wall, a clear space in which

was no flickering barrier, and which I divined was the single opening

in all the great wall. And flanking that opening on either side

hung the massive metal structures, upheld there in the void, as I

guessed, by mighty generators like those of our own ships, castles of

metal whose countless deadly death-beam tubes commanded the opening

between them and from whose white-lit windows the serpent-garrisons

of them gazed out upon us, great space-forts hung there at the

vibration-wall's one opening, guarding the gates of a universe!

In toward the narrow opening between the great forts swept our ships,

and as they moved slowly inward there flashed a challenging signal of

lights from those forts, answered at once by similar signals from our

ships. Then we were driving inward, between the towering metal castles

on either side, flashing in through the great vibration-wall and into

the dying galaxy itself. With generators again humming at high speed

our half-hundred ships swept on, into the thronging thousands of dead

and dying suns that swarmed before us, inside the colossal protecting

shell of the great vibration-wall.

All about us now were great hordes of swarming dark-stars that we could

but dimly glimpse, as our ships flashed between them, vast throngs of

black and burned-out suns that outnumbered the few still flaming stars

by hundreds to one. Here and there about us, though, as we swept on,

we could make out a red sun or two, some comparatively brilliant and

others so dark and far gone that they seemed only like giant cooling

embers in the black heavens. Clusters there were, too, of which all but

one or two suns would be black and dead, and as we flashed on into the

depths of this universe we began to realize at last what tremendous

necessity it had been that had sent the serpent-peoples driving out

through the limitless void in search of a new universe.

Far ahead, though, there loomed before us as we sped on a trio of giant

crimson suns more brilliant than any we had yet seen in this dying

universe, and which hung at its center, each of them as large as great

Canopus itself in our own galaxy. In a great triangle they hung there,

two of them much brighter than the other, a mighty triplet of titanic

waning suns that seemed like the dying monarchs of the vast and dying

realm about them. It was down toward these three great suns that our

ships were slanting now, down toward the space at the center of their

great triangle, and now we saw that in that space there swung a single

mighty world, a dark, immense planet of size inconceivable, almost as

large as the three great suns at whose center it turned, and whose

light and heat fell perpetually upon it.

* * * * *

Broader and broader the great turning world was growing as we slanted

down toward it, until it lay like a tremendous dark shield beneath us,

filling all the heavens below. As our ships sank still lower toward it,

speed swiftly slackening, we began to make out details on its surface,

to make out what seemed to be a vast mass of palely shining structures,

towers and walls and vast, terraced buildings that glowed all with pale

blue light, indescribably ghostly in appearance as they soared into

the dusky, crimson light of the three encircling suns. Here and there

through the masses of these blue-shining structures ran streets, narrow

openings in which swarmed great masses of the writhing serpent-people.

And as I gazed down upon this tremendous city, upon the countless

glowing structures of pale blue light that made it up, my astonishment

at what I saw broke from me in a startled cry.

"This city!" I exclaimed. "Its buildings are of vibrations like the

great wall around their universe!"

A city of vibrations! A mighty city that covered apparently all this

giant planet, and yet whose every structure was built, not of matter

but of etheric-vibrations that were matter-resistant like the great

wall, vibrations infinitely more lasting and impenetrable than any

matter, and projected upward at will into buildings of any shape or

size. Here and there in the mighty city, even as we sped down over it,

we could see buildings vanishing instantaneously, could see other

mighty buildings springing as instantly into being, all of the same

pale blue light, reared or destroyed instantly by snapping on or off

the vibrations that were projected upward to form them!

Now, as our ships slanted down over the vast mass of pale-glowing

structures that stretched from horizon to horizon, I saw that ahead and

beneath there lay amid those structures a mighty circular clearing,

scores of miles in diameter and paved smoothly with the same pale blue

force as the city's buildings and streets. In this vast circle, ranged

regularly in long rows, rested thousands upon countless thousands of

gleaming oval space-ships, in all stages of completion. Over and among

them, swarming ceaselessly through them and toiling to complete them,

moved mighty hordes of the serpent-creatures, armed with great tools

of strange design, the thunderous clamor of their work coming up to

us through the great planet's air. It was the immense workshop of

the serpent-races that lay beneath us, I knew, in which their hordes

labored ceaselessly to complete the mighty fleet that was to carry them

through the void to our universe!

It was not the ranks of half-built ships, though, nor the toiling

throngs among them, that held our gaze in the vast circular clearing

over which we were racing. It was the colossal shape that loomed at

that clearing's center and that occupied fully half the area of its

vast circle, a stupendous metal cone-structure that rose in the air

before us for fully a score of miles, the diameter of its base almost

as great, a gigantic, smooth-sided mountain of metal towering there

above the countless ships and workers in the great clearing around it,

and above the far-stretching city about that clearing. Past its side

our ships were speeding, and we could see now that about it and upon

it there labored other great masses of serpent-creatures, swarming

in and out of the heavy doors that swung open in its sides at various

levels, and laboring upon the great masses of machinery that we could

glimpse inside. Some of these, we saw, were great generators like those

of our ships, making it clear that the vast cone was intended to race

through space. Then, as Korus Kan's keen eyes peered toward and into

its interior as we flashed past, he turned toward us, startled.

"It's a colossal death-beam projector!" he exclaimed. "One that

can move through space like their ships--and that can stab forth a

death-beam of unthinkable size! With that, when they complete it, they

can wipe out all life on a whole world with a single flash of the

stupendous beam!"

Stunned, we gazed toward it as our ships flashed past. The tremendous

cone itself was apparently complete, from vast base to the truncated,

flattened tip. The generators that were to move it through space were

apparently all installed, and the great hordes of serpent-workers who

swarmed in it now were beginning to place in it the massed mechanisms

for the production of the colossal death-beam, which would be projected

up through a tremendous, hollow tube or tunnel running up from the

great cone's interior to the great, round opening at its truncated

tip. The terrific beam, generated in that interior, would flash out of

that opening at the top in whatever direction the vast cone itself was

headed in space, would flash through space with its tremendous power

for immense distances, spreading out fanwise and expanding in every

direction as it flashed on, until it struck the planet at which it

was aimed, enveloping all that planet in its ghostly glow and wiping

out instantly all life upon it! This, then, was the great weapon of

irresistible power which the captured records of the serpent-creatures

had mentioned! And irresistible it was, I saw now; for with it, when

completed, the serpent-creatures could sally forth and with one sweep

of the colossal beam destroy all fleets of space-ships opposing them by

annihilating their crews, could descend upon our universe and with that

same great beam wipe out all life upon world after world of our galaxy,

swiftly, resistlessly, until in all our universe was left no living

thing except themselves!

But now, even as we stared in horror and amazement at the vast cone,

our ships were driving past it, still over the great clearing filled

with close-ranked masses of the half-built ships, until before and

beneath us lay the mighty circle's edge. And now we saw that beyond

it, touching it, there lay another smaller circle of clear space, amid

the vast city's crowding structures of blue light, a circle from which

throngs of space-ships were constantly rising and upon which others

were descending, it being obviously one of the points of departure and

arrival for all ships. Down toward it our own ships were speeding,

slower with every moment, until at last they had landed at this smaller

circle's edge, our own closest to that edge, the pale-glowing mighty

buildings towering up just beside us.

Then the space-doors of our ships were clanging open, and their

occupants were writhing forth from them. A moment and the door of

our prison snapped open; then, herded forward by a half-dozen of

serpent-creatures armed with small death-beam tubes, we were marched

out of the ship and onto the smooth pavement of blue force that covered

this circle also. There, massed together, we were halted for a moment,

and took the opportunity to stare about. From the ships behind us,

just landed, the last of the serpent-crews had writhed forth, passing

across to a narrow street that opened through the mass of towering,

shimmering buildings before us, from the circular clearing's edge. We

ourselves were being marched toward that street, now, the great oval

ships lying empty and deserted behind us, and at sight of their open

doors I turned and twitched the arm of Jhul Din, walking beside me.

"It's a chance in a million to get away!" I whispered, to him and to

Korus Kan. "If we can overpower these guards and get back inside our

ship----"

They turned toward me, startled, and then as they glanced back toward

the deserted ships their eyes lit with excitement. A moment more and

I had whispered my plan, glancing toward the half-dozen guards behind

us, and then the next moment we put it into effect, Jhul Din suddenly

slumping to the blue-force pavement and lying motionless, sprawled as

though suddenly stricken down. It was the most primitive of ruses,

and I could only hope in that moment that our guards might not have

had experience of it. The next moment, though, they had seen the

motionless form of the big Spican, and with a natural perplexity had

writhed forward toward it, holding their beam-tubes, though, gripped

in the coils of their strange bodies, alertly toward ourselves. Beside

the big crustacean they halted, tubes trained still upon us as they

inspected him. Then the next moment the Spican had reached out his

great arms with inconceivable swiftness and suddenness, grasping the

serpent-guards beside him before they could turn their tubes down upon

him, threshing with them in sudden fierce battle as we rushed forward

to aid him.

The next moment we were all struggling there with those guards in a

wild mêlée, their deadly tubes knocked from their grasp by Jhul Din

in his leap upon them. With the strength and fury of despair we flung

ourselves upon them, rending their writhing bodies to fragments as

they sought to coil about us, our hoarse shouts rising above their

own hissing cries of fear and alarm. In but a moment, it seemed, we

were crushing the last of them beneath us, Jhul Din and one or two of

our crew leaping already toward the open door of our ship, while we

staggered up to follow. But as we did so there came from behind us

other hissing cries, and we whirled about, then stopped short. For

back from the street into which they had just gone were rushing the

serpent-crews of the ships behind us, a resistless horde that was

flashing upon us with the ghostly death-beams of their tubes stabbing

full toward us!

_8. The Hall of the Living Dead_

Racing forward as they were, the serpent-creatures rushing upon us

could only loose their death-beams at chance upon us, and it was that

alone that saved us, the deadly rays going wide except for one that

struck and annihilated two of our party in its wild whirling. Then,

before they could loose the beams again upon us, we had rushed forward

to meet them and were among them; while at the same moment I shouted

hoarsely over my shoulder to Jhul Din, who with his three followers

had reached now the open door of our ship, behind us, and who now had

hesitated for an instant as he saw our new foes rush down upon us.

"Go on, Jhul Din!" I cried. "Get away in the ship--we'll hold them till

you get clear----!"

Then we were meeting the serpent-creatures before us, and the next few

moments we seemed surrounded, weighed down, by a solid mass of writhing

bodies at which we struck crazily with the last of our strength. Even

as we struggled wildly, though, I heard above the shouts and hissing

cries about me the clang of the ship's space-doors, the swift humming

of its generators; then as I staggered clear of my opponents for a

moment I saw the great craft, with Jhul Din at the controls in its

pilot room, lifting suddenly from the clearing, slanting steeply upward

at immense speed, vanishing almost instantly in the crimson sunlight

above. I yelled with exultation at the sight, and then was pulled down

once more by my opponents, held tightly with Korus Kan and the others,

as with wild hissing cries the greater part of the serpent-creatures

rushed to their ships.

A moment more and two score of their craft were shooting sharply upward

in hot pursuit of Jhul Din and his fleeing ship. Held tightly by our

serpent-captors, we waited with them the return of the pursuing ships.

Would they catch the big Spican? Slowly the minutes dragged past,

while in the gulf of space above us, we knew, Jhul Din and his three

followers were racing, twisting, fighting against that remorseless

pursuit that would track him by the space-charts. Then at last, after

a wait that seemed eternities in length, the dark, long shapes of the

ships that had pursued him drove down from above and landed beside us,

their serpent-crews emerging, but without trace of Jhul Din or his

ship. Whether he had managed to elude them and drive out between the

great space-forts into open space and escape, or whether he had met his

end beneath their death-beams, we could not say nor guess.

I knew, though, that they would hardly have given up the pursuit

unsuccessfully so soon, and it was with doubt and fear in my heart

that I rose now in response to the motioned commands of our captors.

Guarding us now with a score or more of death-beam tubes they marched

us across the circle toward the street that opened from it, and then

down that street's length, between the mighty structures of blue force

on either side. Half-transparent as were those buildings of pale blue

light, we could see in them all the various floors and levels, as

though in buildings of blue glass, and on those levels great ranks

of half-glimpsed mechanisms tended by moving, writhing throngs of

serpent-beings. Other throngs of them moved about us in the narrow

street, from building to building, passing and repassing around us as

we marched along.

To these, though, and to the buildings about us we paid but small

attention; for at the end of the narrow street down which we were

marching there loomed a great blue-shining structure of the same

vibration as the others, but which dwarfed them by its tremendous

size. Its vast, terraced sides slanted up for level upon mighty

level, and as we neared it we saw that the street itself ended in

it, passing through the high, great doorway before us into the

shining structure's interior. In and out of it were pouring hordes

of the serpent-creatures, and into it we were marched by our guards,

through the great hall inside and on through a succession of other

corridors in which writhed serpent-throngs. Through the open doors of

the rooms along those corridors, as we passed by them, I could see

serpent-creatures grouped about low, desk-like platforms, could see

massed rows of great mechanisms that seemed tabulating or recording

machines of some sort, saw other great rooms filled with flexible metal

rolls like those we had captured with our oval ship, great collections

of written records, and realized that this huge building must hold

within itself the central controlling government of all the races of

the serpent-creatures, on this great central world and on the worlds

that revolved about the few living suns in the universe about us.

Our captors halted us, at last, before a door heavily guarded by

serpent-creatures with ray-tubes, and while one of our own guards

passed through the door into the great rooms we could glimpse inside,

the remainder kept close watch upon us. I sensed that our own fate was

being decided in those rooms beside us, and a few moments later saw

that my guess had been right, for there came out the serpent-creature

who had gone in, giving to our guards brief hissing orders. At once

they marched us onward, emerging again into the great central hall that

ran through the vast, blue-shimmering building, and progressing with us

down that great, crowded corridor, until they turned us sharply to the

right, through a big open door into a mighty hall or room, the nature

and purpose of which we could not grasp for the moment.

It was filled with great, transparent cases, ranged in long, regular

rows, extending from flickering blue-light wall to wall of the vast

hall. In those cases there were shapes and figures, rigid and unmoving,

that had apparently once been living things, and that were of a

strangeness inconceivable. In hundreds, in thousands, they were grouped

there in the protecting cases, beasts and beings all but indescribable

in appearance, so strange were they even to our eyes, which had seen

all the countless forms of life of our own galaxy. There was, in a case

near us, a vast flat thing of white flesh, disk-like and scores of feet

in diameter, with a single staring eye at its center. In another case

was a great, many-legged cylinder of flesh without discernible features

whatever. In still another, just before us, a black, powerful-looking

insect-shape that was apparently double-headed, with two sets of

black, beady eyes. All down the great hall's length stretched the rows

of cases, filled with beings of which the sight of some alone was a

creeping horror, and as we gazed at that incredible collection of alien

forms in amazement, its significance rushed upon me.

"It's a museum!" I exclaimed. "A great collection of the living forms

that have existed in this dying universe--preserved here for countless

ages, perhaps, out of the past!"

As I spoke, though, there were coming down toward us from the far end

of the great hall two serpent-creatures who seemed the custodians of

this strange collection. Our guards addressed to them a few hissing

commands, and the two turned, seemed to survey the cases about them,

while we stared in perplexity. Then one turned toward a niche inset

in the wall, in which rested two transparent containers or tubes of

liquid, one of bright red and the other of green, and a long, slender

metal needle that was apparently a hypodermic of some sort. Thrusting

the needle into the red liquid, the serpent-creature holding it

advanced to the case nearest us, which contained only the double-headed

insect-creature. He swung the side of the case open, and then, with a

swift jab, inserted the needle in the body of the thing inside.

There was a moment of silence, and then, to our amazement and horror,

the insect-thing moved, its eyes roving from side to side, its limbs

twitching. The thing was alive! The two serpent-creatures stepped

toward the case, as it came to life, holding death-beam tubes toward

it and addressing it in hissing tones. Apparently it was of some

intelligence, for in response to those orders it stepped outside the

case, down the hall toward another case which was all but filled by

other strange shapes. Into this it stepped, at the command of the

two, and then the one with the needle filled it with the green fluid,

and inserted this in turn into the thing's body. At once that body

stiffened, ceased to move, the thing becoming as rigid and unlife-like

in appearance as before, its eyes staring stonily ahead in all the

appearance of death.

Horror filled me at the sight, horror that sickened me, for I saw now

that the things about us, the countless strange shapes in these rows

of cases, were all as alive and conscious as ourselves, their life and

intelligence unharmed but their bodies thrown into a state of rigid

suspended animation by the insertion of the green fluid into them, a

fluid that must be like the poisons with which some insects are able to

keep their captured prey alive and unmoving indefinitely, a fluid that

suspended all animation instantly and that could only be neutralized

by the injection of the opposing red fluid, though always the victim

remained conscious and alive. _Alive!_ These myriad alien shapes about

us--rigid and motionless, yet living and conscious, living perhaps for

ages in that living death--my brain reeled at the thought. I turned to

Korus Kan, sick with horror, but then stopped short, stiffened. For now

the serpent-creature grasping the metal needle and the tube of green

fluid was coming toward us!

All the horror of the fate intended for us burst across my brain in one

flash of awful comprehension, then, and a strangled cry broke from me.

"They're going to keep us here too!" I cried, pointing with trembling

hand. "Keep us here as strange beings--in living death in this museum

of strange beings!"

* * * * *

A moment we stood, in horror-stricken silence, and then as the full

awfulness of the thing reserved for us penetrated the brains of

my companions they uttered a medley of hoarse shouts of rage and

horror and as one leapt forward upon the serpent-creatures with the

fluid-tubes and upon our guards.

I think that we expected no better than death in that moment, for the

death-beam tubes of the guards were full upon us, but I think too

that we all preferred a swift, clean death to the horror of living

death that awaited us in this museum of hell. But the very motive that

made us desire death prevented the guards from loosing it upon us,

preferring to follow their orders and place us in the collection about

us rather than annihilate us. For instead of loosing the rays, as we

sprang, they leapt to meet us, at the same time giving utterance to

loud, hissing cries of alarm.

Our guards outnumbered us, and though we leapt upon them with all

the energy of horror and despair, striving to wrest the death-tubes

from their grasp, they coiled about and held us, while into the great

hall from the big corridor outside there rushed in answer to their

alarm other scores of serpent-creatures, leaping likewise upon us.

Wearied as we were and outnumbered by five to one, our struggle,

though fierce, was of short duration, and then we were held completely

by the creatures about us, while toward us again came the two

serpent-creatures with the metal needle and two liquid-tubes. First

toward me they came, dipping the needle into the green liquid and then

stabbing it into my arm.

I shrank deeply as the sharp needle pierced my skin, but the next

moment ceased to shrink, as through me there ran a wave of cold, a

flood of utter iciness that held me motionless, unable to move. No

muscle of mine, down to the smallest, could I control, lying there

staring straight ahead, unmoving, unwinking, unbreathing even. My

lungs, my heart, my blood, all had stopped moving in the instant that

the poison flooded through me, yet my brain was as clear or clearer

than ever, coldly clear, as though attached to it was no body whatever.

My senses, though, still functioned, and though all power of motion had

left me I could still see and hear as clearly as ever. It was as though

my brain had been suddenly lifted from the mass of flesh that was my

body, and endowed with a strange, lifeless life of its own.

Now the guards rose from me, leaving me lying motionless and rigid,

and turned toward Korus Kan, who was being held down by others.

His metal body seemed to puzzle them for an instant, and then they

solved the problem by injecting the needle of green fluid into the

nerve-tissues at the edge of his eyes, from which it would spread

instantly to the other living organs cased by his metal body. Another

moment and he too lay like me, rigid and powerless to move, our eyes

meeting in an unchanging, stony stare. Within minutes more the green

fluid had been injected into the last of our score of followers, and we

had all become but rigid living statues, our consciousness and senses

alone unaffected. Then by the serpent-creatures we were set into the

transparent case from which the double-headed insect-thing had been

moved to make way for us, were placed in a sitting position with backs

against the case's sides, and then it was closed and the guards passed

out of the big hall, leaving in it only the two serpent-creatures who

were its custodians.

Rigid, unmoving, unbreathing, yet with consciousness, mind and senses

as clear as ever, living brains cased in bodies that were helpless and

motionless, I think that no position of any in all time could have been

more terrible than ours. Had consciousness been suspended also, with

the powers of our bodies, the captivity we suffered would have been

but a dreamless sleep, at least; but to allow our consciousness and

intelligence to remain, our bodies severed from our control--that was

a torture that surely none other could ever equal. Statue-like we sat

there, while hour followed hour, gazing always in the same direction

with unmoving and unwinking eyes. Certainly no wonder would it have

been had we gone mad in the first hours of that ghastly, terrible

imprisonment.

As the hours, the days, dragged past, though, I bent all my mental

efforts toward the keeping of my sanity, and though at times my

brain reeled beneath our terrible predicament, I desperately forced

my thoughts into other channels. From where I sat I could gaze out

into the great corridor outside the room, and that at least gave me

something moving to contemplate, as through it swept the never-ceasing

hordes of the serpent-people, a rush of activity that dwindled never

until the rising of the darkest of the three suns marked the coming

of the night, the sleep-period of the serpent-people. The light of

that darker sun was so far dimmer than that of the other two that as

this world turned between the three one-third of each day was spent

in a dusky red darkness, a strange night in which all activity in

the vast serpent-city about us seemed to cease, only our room's two

serpent-guards and some others here and there outside remaining alert,

our two room-guards being replaced at the beginning of each night by

two others who alternated with them in their duties.

It was these things alone, though, the coming of night and the changing

of our guards, the cessation and recommencement of the activity in the

corridor outside, the waning and waxing of the crimson light that fell

through the great building's flickering blue vibration-walls, that

alone marked for us the passage of time. Day was following day while

we sat on there in living death, unmoving as stones, and I knew that

with each day the great fleet of the serpent-creatures I had glimpsed

in the clearing would be approaching nearer to completion, as would

the colossal death-beam cone with which they meant to wipe out all the

races of all the galaxy's worlds. And we, on whom had rested the one

chance of our universe, had failed--we were prisoners. I could not

believe that Jhul Din, with his two or three followers, had managed to

get through the great vibration-wall about this universe and speed to

the Andromeda universe for help. Our last hope was gone, and the last

hope of our galaxy with it, prisoned as we were in the helpless flesh

of our own bodies, from which there could be no escape, lacking even

the power to destroy ourselves and end our endless torture.

* * * * *

The passing days became blurred and confused in my mind, as we sat on

there, and I felt that my brain was beginning to give at last beneath

the awful strain. Time still I could roughly measure, though, by the

waning of activity in the corridor outside, by the darkening of the

crimson light that slanted through the pale blue walls. I think that

it was on the tenth day of our imprisonment that I watched that light

darkening, as always, wondering for how many times I was to see it

thus, for how many days, years, ages, we were to lie in this living

death, in the serpent-creatures' museum. As I watched, the passing

throngs in the corridor outside were thinning, disappearing, with the

coming of the dusky night, and soon there was almost complete silence

about us, only the low hissing of the two serpent-guards, near the

room's door, as they conversed there, breaking the stillness. Then

suddenly my brooding thoughts were broken into by sharp surprize as I

glimpsed a big, stealthy shape that showed itself for a moment in the

corridor outside, and then dodged swiftly back.

With a sudden flame of excitement leaping in me for the first time

since our imprisonment, I gazed toward the door, eyes unmoving as

always. A moment more and the dark, erect shape that I had glimpsed

outside came slowly into view once more, peering around the door's edge

at the two serpent-guards, who for the moment were turned away from

it. Seeing this, the lurking shape came slowly into the room, through

the door from the shadows of the corridor, and as it did so I saw it

clearly, and well it was for me that I could not speak or surely I

would have shouted aloud. For it was Jhul Din!

A great wave of hope flooded through my brain as I saw the big Spican

move stealthily inside, a thick metal bar in his grasp, his eyes roving

about the dusky-lit great room. Then, as they fell upon our own case,

upon us sitting motionless, I saw him gasp. A moment he surveyed us, my

eyes staring stonily straight into his own as we sat still rigid and

unmoving, and then he had turned, was moving silently toward the two

unsuspecting guards. Closer he crept toward them, while I watched in an

agony of suspense, and then as he reached them, raised his great bar

above his head, the two creatures, warned by some slight sound, whirled

suddenly around and confronted him!

Instantly the death-tubes they held came up, but in the moment that

they did so Jhul Din's bar had smashed down upon them in a great,

crushing blow that laid both lifeless on the blue force-floor. Then

the Spican sprang to our case, opening its side and lifting us out,

seeking with rough restorative measures to revive us. Yet we lay as

silent and rigid as ever, and I saw despair creep into his eyes, I

could have shouted to him in my agony of mind had not my muscles been

as far-severed from my brain's control as ever. Then the Spican raised

from his fruitless efforts, gazed despairingly about, until his eyes

fell upon the niche in the wall that held the tubes of red and green

fluid. With a leap he was upon them, bringing them and the needle back

toward us.

A moment he studied them, in doubt, then inserted the needle in the

green fluid and pierced my forearm with it. I could have screamed to

him his mistake had I had power of speech, for the green fluid injected

into me had no effect upon me whatever, since I lay already beneath its

force. Seeing this he swiftly made trial of the red fluid, injecting

this in the same manner into my body, and then, as he gazed anxiously

down upon my rigid figure, I felt a sudden warmth flooding through me,

and for the first time in all those days became _aware_ of my body,

felt muscles and limbs moving in answer to my will's commands, felt

heart and breathing starting after their long cessation. Then I was

staggering up to my feet, the Spican's great arm about me, reeling

upward with muscles utterly strange and cramped after those days of

living death.

"Jhul Din!" I cried, my voice strange to my own ears after that time of

speechlessness, and he gripped my arm reassuringly.

"Steady, Dur Nal," he said. "You're out of that now, and we'll win

clear of this hellish city yet."

As he spoke he was dropping to the floor, injecting swiftly into the

bodies of the rest the red fluid, beginning with Korus Kan, and as

he did so he explained to me swiftly how he and his three followers

had managed to elude the ships that had pursued him by fleeing from

them into a near-by cluster of dead and dying suns, and pretending to

have perished by crashing into a great dark-star, landing his ship

upon its barren, burned-out surface and escaping the scrutiny of the

pursuing ships, who returned in the belief that he and his ship had met

annihilation. In that hiding-place, upon that black and airless and

lightless star, he had remained for days, not daring to venture forth

amid the swarms of serpent-ships that filled the space-lanes about

him, yet resolved to return and ascertain our fate. When at last, days

later, he had been able to venture out, back to this vast world and

down upon it through the dusky night, he had boldly landed the ship

where it would excite no suspicion, in the landing-circle from which

he had first escaped in it. Then, leaving his little crew of three

in it and stealing through the shadows of the silent streets toward

the great central building where he hoped against hope to find some

trace of us, he had made his way through the darkened corridors of the

huge structure until he had stumbled upon the strange museum of the

serpent-people where we were prisoned.

While he swiftly explained this to me Korus Kan and our followers

were staggering up beside me as the injections of red fluid revived

them, one by one, and I turned toward the door, then uttered a

horror-stricken exclamation. For in the corridor outside a single

serpent-creature faced us, attracted perhaps by the sound of our

voices, its glassy eyes full upon us! Even in the instant that I saw

it, before ever I could leap upon it, it had turned with incredible

quickness and was flashing back down the corridor, farther into the

great building, uttering as it did so a high, hissing cry. And in an

instant that cry was taken up and re-echoed in all the great structure

about us, by the roused serpent-creatures who were rushing in answer to

it!

"The alarm!" I cried. "Out of the building and to the ship!"

With lightning swiftness now Jhul Din was injecting in the last of

our followers the restorative red fluid, and then as those last ones

stumbled up into consciousness beside us, we raced toward the door,

out into the corridor. There, abruptly, we stopped short, our last

wild hopes of escape in that instant blasted. For less than a thousand

feet down the great corridor from us, pouring out into it from every

quarter of the vast building's interior in answer to the hissing cries

of alarm, there was racing down upon us a great mass of hundreds upon

hundreds of the writhing serpent-creatures!

_9. A Dash for Freedom_

Doom stared at us in that instant as the serpent-creatures rushed down

the great corridor toward us, for well we knew that never could we win

our way down the long street to our waiting ship with that pursuit

behind us. For a flashing moment as we stood there, stunned, it seemed

that recapture was inevitable, and then as a sudden thought flared

across my brain I cried out to my companions.

"Get out of the building!" I cried. "I can hold them here----!"

They hesitated, and then sprang down the corridor toward the street,

while at the same instant I leapt into the great museum-hall from which

we had just emerged. With a single bound I had grasped the needle

and tube of restorative red fluid and was at the great transparent

cases, ripping the sides open frantically and stabbing the needle with

lightning swiftness into their occupants. Those in a dozen or more

cases I had swiftly treated thus before I dropped the tube and needle

and leapt back to the door, into the corridor. As I did so I had seen

the first of the strange, terrible shapes I had touched with the needle

beginning to stir, to move from their cases.

As I sprang back out into the corridor, though, the racing masses

of the serpent-creatures were but a scant hundred feet behind me,

my own companions racing out of the building ahead of me, now. The

serpent-things loosed no rays upon us, desiring, I knew, to return us

to that hell of living death from which we had escaped, but as I sprang

down the corridor they were so close behind that another moment, I

knew, would see my capture and that of my friends ahead. Then, just

as the serpent-creatures, racing behind me, reached the door of the

museum, they halted, recoiled. For out into the corridor from that

museum-hall had flopped a great, terrible shape, the mighty disk of

pale flesh with a single central eye that my needle had been first to

revive!

Instantly it had moved upon the serpent-creatures upon whom its glaring

eye fell, and before they could escape had thrown its vast disk

of flesh about a mass of scores of them, bunching its body swiftly

together then with terrific power and crushing them within it. At

another mass of them it leapt, ravening with terrific fury after its

prisonment of untold ages of living death, while out of the museum

there came after it the other shapes I had revived, awful insect-beings

that leapt upon the serpent-creatures with terrible claws and fangs,

heedless of the death-beams that flashed toward them, many-limbed

things of flesh that whirled forward as fiercely to the attack,

grotesque, terrible monsters of a dozen different sorts that leapt

now upon the serpent-creatures who had prisoned them for ages with

inconceivable raging power, heaping about them great masses of crushed

and mangled serpent-dead.

Only in a glance over my shoulder did I glimpse that massacre of the

serpent-creatures behind me, for I was racing on down the corridor and

out of the building into the narrow street, where my friends awaited

me. With a word I explained to them what had happened, and instantly

we set off down the street, between the great, towering buildings of

beaming blue force that lay silent and dead now in the dusky darkness,

only their own flickering light and that of the vast, dim-red sun that

swung in the black heavens above lighting us forward as we raced on.

Behind, though, in the great building from which we had fled, were

rising appalling cries, the hissing utterances of the serpent-creatures

and the strange and awful cries of the things with which they battled.

Now about us were rising other cries as the serpent-creatures across

all the city began to rouse beneath the terrific din of the wild fight

in the central building. Behind us, as we raced on down the narrow

street, we saw them emerging from the buildings, gazing about, and then

as we were glimpsed, fleeing toward the landing-circle where lay the

ships, other cries went up and after us leapt the serpent-things from

all along the street, pouring into that street from its buildings and

from adjacent streets and racing after us.

But a few hundred yards ahead lay the landing-circle, and as we ran

on we could make out the gleaming, great shapes of the oval ships

lying upon it, could discern the shape of our own awaiting ship,

at the circle's edge, its door open before us. Toward that black

opening, as toward some tremendous magnet, we stumbled on with the

last of our strength, but close behind came the serpent-creatures in

ever-increasing masses, the alarm spreading now over all the gigantic

city about us, and there lay still a distance that seemed infinite

between us and that open door. Then, when we were but a scant hundred

feet from it, the serpent-creatures hardly more than that behind us,

Korus Kan slipped, stumbled and went down.

We wheeled around, reaching down to help him up, but halted even as we

did so. For the serpent-creatures behind us were within yards of us

now, hissing cries of triumph rising from them as they writhed toward

us. Then, in the next moment, from the great, looming bulk of our ship

ahead there stabbed down and over us a shaft of blinding crimson light,

a narrow, deadly ray that struck the writhing masses of our pursuers

and swept through them in a great, slicing curve, sending them into

annihilation in dazzling bursts of light as it touched them. Those

farther behind came racing on, nevertheless, but before they could

reach us we had stumbled on and into the ship, and with space-doors

clanging and generators suddenly droning loudly, our ship shot up into

the darkness just in time to escape a dozen pale death-beams that

sprang toward us from the mass of our pursuers.

Up into the darkness above the vast, blue-glowing city we flashed,

Jhul Din and Korus Kan and I bursting up into the pilot room and

replacing our follower there whose timely action had saved us. Beneath

us the whole city was rising as the alarm spread, lights flashing

out here and there among its buildings, serpent-hordes pouring into

the streets, while from the landing-circle from which we had just

risen there shot up after us a dozen long gleaming oval ships, in

close pursuit. So swiftly were they after us that before we had fully

realized their nearness, their death-beams were sweeping and slicing

through the darkness about us. I shouted a swift order, Korus Kan

whirled the controls about and sent our ship flashing straight back

into the mass of our dozen pursuers, and then we had leapt through

them, our red rays striking right and left as we did so, and two of

their great craft had flared there in the darkness above the great city

in blinding crimson light, and we were racing up into the darkness

again with the ten remaining ships farther behind, but still speeding

on our track.

Upward we shot with terrific speed, and in a moment the vast, turning

world beneath, covered with the masses of blue force-structures, had

contracted and dwindled to a mere point beneath us as we fled up and

outward into space. As we flashed up from it, though, I had glimpsed

rising from it a full five hundred serpent-ships, with a score of the

great disk attraction-ships, and as these lifted to follow the ten that

leapt close behind us, I saw that the serpent-creatures were taking

no slightest chance of our escape. I turned to Korus Kan, swiftly, as

our craft leapt upward, shouting to him above the droning roar of the

generators that filled our craft now.

"Head straight out toward the great vibration-wall--toward the opening

in it!" I cried.

"We'll never get through that opening--between the space-forts!" Jhul

Din exclaimed. "They'll have received word of our escape, and will be

waiting for us!"

I shook my head. "We'll have to run between them and take our chance!"

I yelled. "It's our one chance of escape from this universe!"

* * * * *

Now the giant central world beneath was no longer visible, as we raced

upward and outward from it at terrific speed, and ahead loomed one

of the three giant suns that lay about that world. We were leaping

forward straight toward it, and in an instant it had broadened across

the heavens to a stupendous disk of raging crimson fire, a thunderous,

titanic sun into which we seemed inevitably doomed to plunge, but as it

flared across the firmament before us Korus Kan swerved the controls,

and we were flashing by it, past the red star's edge and on outward

through the dying universe. Traveling at a speed that was all but

suicidal to use inside any universe, thrumming on at all but our utmost

velocity, we reeled outward through the throngs of dead and dying stars

about us, while behind us at a speed that matched our own our ten

pursuers came relentlessly on, with the five hundred-odd ships that we

had seen rising from the serpent-city following us in turn.

Out--out--the minutes of that mad outward flight through the dying

universe are but a confused, strange memory of a wild, awful race

through the massed dead and dying stars that thronged thick about us,

and between which we drove with such terrific swiftness that hardly

could we glimpse them in passing save on our space-chart. On that

chart I saw a close-massed cluster of dark suns full before us, saw

the Antarian swing the ship lightning-like sidewise to avoid it, then

sharply drive the controls back again as before us a crimson-flaming

star about which turned countless worlds of the serpent-people

loomed before us. Out--out--flashing crazily on past crimson sun and

thundering dark-star, through the massed suns of great dead and dying

clusters and past far-swinging planets, with the ten long ships behind

clinging remorselessly to us--out--out--until far ahead there became

visible across all the heavens before us the wavering pale blue tight

of the great vibration-wall that encircled this universe.

Out between the last of the dying universe's dark and dying suns we

were racing, toward that mighty wall, and as we leapt forward I pointed

toward it. "The space-forts!" I exclaimed. "Make for the opening

between them, Korus Kan--and slacken speed a little!"

Straight toward the two great metal structures set in the pale

blue-shining wall we leapt, two huge fortresses of gleaming metal

from whose narrow openings came brilliant white light, whose mighty

death-beam tubes swung threateningly out toward the space between

them, the single vibrationless opening in the vast and impenetrable

vibration-wall. They had been warned, were ready for us, we knew, and

knew too that not even by a miracle could our ship run between those

towering forts without coming under the deadly beams, yet still toward

them we leapt, at a speed slackened a little, now, while after us like

leaping things of prey came the ten ships, rapidly overhauling us,

flashing closer each moment.

We had almost reached the great opening in the wall, now, the ten

ships behind almost upon us, and as we flashed through space the whole

scene was like one from some weird dream--the thronging dark and

dying suns of the great universe behind us, the tremendous, all but

invisible, pale blue wall of light that enclosed it, the single opening

in that wall full before us, guarded on either side by the mighty

metal space-forts, the great ships leaping after us just behind. We

were flashing into the narrow opening--from the great space-forts to

right and left the deadly death-beams were stabbing out toward us in

scores, in hundreds--the ships behind were almost upon us, their own

death-beams stabbing toward us--and then I cried a single word to Korus

Kan. He thrust the controls suddenly forward with a lightning-like

move, and just as our ship was flashing into the narrow opening it

dipped sharply downward instead and plummeted down through space while

the ships just behind, before they could dip with us, had rushed into

the opening and into the hell of death-beams that crossed and recrossed

in it from the space-forts on each side!

The next instant, while we curved swiftly upward again, we saw the ten

ships that had rushed into that opening whirling blindly about as the

death-beams from their own space-forts seared through them and wiped

out all life inside them. Those in the great space-forts, realizing

those ten to be their own ships, had turned off the beams in the next

moment but were an instant too late, since in the narrow opening the

ten ships were whirling crazily to that side and this, without guiding

intelligence inside them, smashing into each other and into the

space-forts on each side as they rushed insanely in all directions. And

even as that wild confusion inside the opening was at its height our

own ship had curved up and was flashing at full speed into the opening,

between the space-forts!

For an instant, in that wild chaos of whirling ships, those in the

space-forts did not glimpse our own flying ship and in that instant we

were half through the great opening between them. Then they had seen

us, had loosed their beams upon us in scores, and in the next instant

all about us seemed a single tremendous mêlée of aimlessly whirling

ships, and gigantic space-forts, and pale death-beams that sliced and

swept about us. Thick about us flashed those ghostly fingers of death,

and full before us two of the whirling ships collided and smashed with

terrific force, then Korus Kan had dodged them by a swift shifting of

the controls, our generators roared suddenly louder as he turned on our

utmost speed, and the crazy chaos of ships and beams and forts about us

had suddenly vanished, replaced by darkness and silence unutterable.

We were _through_, were racing out into the void again with the great

vibration-wall and the dying universe it enclosed and the pursuing

serpent-ships inside it dropping farther behind each moment! In the

blackness that encircled us the dying universe was a far-flung,

dwindling glow behind us, and our own a far patch of misty light to

the left, but there shone in the darkness far ahead a misty disk of

radiant light, and it was toward this that our ship was heading. For we

were flashing out again upon our interrupted mission, were flying out

through the awful gulf of outer space once more toward the Andromeda

universe!

_10. Flight and Pursuit_

"Through the vibration-wall!" I cried, as our ship raced out at

utmost speed. "Out of the serpent-universe--and we may yet get to the

Andromeda universe in time!"

The eyes of Jhul Din and Korus Kan were as aflame with excitement as my

own, at that moment, and from beneath came the triumphant shouts of our

followers. There remained of the latter hardly more than a bare score,

I knew--few enough to handle the great ship, but the control and

operation of it were so simple that by standing alternate watches we

could hold our course through space. Briefly I explained this to Korus

Kan, he nodding assent, when from Jhul Din there came a cry that caused

both of us to spin around toward him in swift alarm. The big Spican's

eyes were fixed upon the space-chart above, and as we turned he raised

an arm toward it.

"The five hundred serpent-ships!" he cried. "They've come out through

the great wall too--_they're after us_!"

The blood in my veins seemed to chill with sudden renewal of our former

tenseness and terror, as on the space-chart we saw, racing out after

us from the dying universe, the five hundred-odd serpent-ships that

had risen from the giant central world to pursue us, and that now,

undeterred by the fate of the ten ships we had lured to destruction,

were speeding out into the great void after us. Moments they had been

delayed, apparently, by the confusion and chaos there in the opening

between the space-forts, but though in those moments we had flashed

far ahead their close-massed ships came on after us at their topmost

speed--a great pursuit that they were carrying out into the void

between the universes!

"They'll pursue us to the bitter end!" I exclaimed, my eyes on the

chart. "They'll go to any length rather than let us get to the

Andromeda universe!"

I wheeled about, my eyes seeking our speed-dials. Already we were

traveling through the void at our own highest velocity, a full ten

million light-speeds, but the shining mass of the Andromeda universe

seemed infinitely distant in the blackness ahead, with that swift,

relentless pursuit behind us. A moment more and Jhul Din strode out

of the pilot room down to the great, throbbing generators beneath,

striving to gain from them a fraction more of speed. For now was

beginning, we knew, the most bitter of all chases, a stern chase with

vast abysses of space lying between us and the universe that was our

goal, and with the five hundred flying craft of the serpent-creatures

close behind.

On--on--moment after moment, hour after dragging hour, our ship hummed

through the awful void, flashing with each moment through countless

millions of miles of the infinity of blackness and emptiness that lay

about us, with the half-thousand ships of the serpent-creatures coming

grimly on behind. The far-flung, dim-glowing dying universe behind us

glowed even dimmer, diminishing in extent, too, as we shot onward,

while before us the shining disk-mass of the Andromeda universe shone

ever more brightly; yet it was with a terrifying slowness that that

disk largened as we flashed toward it. Tensely I stood with Korus

Kan in the pilot room, gazing toward it, and even then could not but

reflect upon what a strange spectacle it would all have presented to

any observer who could have seen it: a spectacle of one mighty ship

pursued by a half-thousand, as it raced through the void from one

universe to another, manned by a score of dissimilar beings drawn from

the stars of still a third universe, and carrying with them its fate.

But it was with dark enough thoughts, as our ship flashed on for hour

upon hour, that I myself contemplated the three universes that lay

before and behind and beside us. Before us the Andromeda universe was

shining in ever-increasing size and brilliance with each hour that we

raced toward it; but what, I wondered, would we find in that universe

even were we able to escape the swift and terrible pursuit behind? Was

there any chance of finding in it, in the race that held sway over

its suns and worlds, the help that could save our galaxy? Was it not

possible that even were we able to reach it we would be treated by that

race as merely other strangers and invaders from an alien universe?

My eyes swung, too, toward the far little glow of light in the

blackness to our left, a patch of misty light that seemed very tiny in

the stupendous blackness and emptiness of space that lay about it. Yet

my mind's eye, leaping out across the terrific abysses that separated

us from it, could see that little light-patch as it was, could make out

the throngs of blazing stars that formed it--our galaxy, the giant suns

and smaller stars and thronging, far-swinging worlds through which we

had roamed with the ships of the Interstellar Patrol. And I could see

it as it would be now, convulsed with panic fear, as from their great

base of the Cancer cluster the vanguard of the serpent-invaders spread

terror and destruction out over the neighboring suns, preparing the

way for the mighty host of invaders that was to follow.

But it was when I turned, glancing back to where the dying universe

of the serpent-people glowed dim and ominous behind us, decreasing

steadily in size as we flashed from it, that my mood was darkest. In

that mighty mass of dead and dying suns, I knew, there on the giant

world that turned between that central triplet of great, dying suns,

the serpent-races were completing their plans, were preparing to launch

themselves across the void toward my own universe. Already their vast

fleet of tens of thousands of ships was all but complete, and soon

would be completed, too, that gigantic death-beam projector whose awful

power no force could ever withstand. Our only chance of preventing the

descent of that vast horde and their terrible weapon upon our galaxy

was to reach the Andromeda universe and procure there, somehow, the

aid with which we might return and crush the serpent-people in their

own dying universe. And had we a chance even to reach the Andromeda

universe, with the half-thousand craft of our serpent-pursuers driving

relentlessly on our track?

* * * * *

In the hours that followed, it was as though all else had ceased to

exist, so centered were our minds upon that remorseless pursuit. On and

on we flashed, our throbbing, beating generators flinging us through

the void with their utmost power, but behind came the serpent-ships at

their topmost speed, too, and though for forty-eight hours we had raced

through space we had covered hardly a third of the distance to the

Andromeda universe. As I raised my eyes to the space-chart then, toward

our single ship-dot and the swarm of dots behind it, a sharp, cold

thrill ran through me. For now I saw that the gap of a few inches that

separated us from them on the chart had lessened a little, the swarm

drawing noticeably closer toward our single ship-dot. A moment I stared

up at the chart in stunned silence; then, with realization, a cry broke

from me.

"_The serpent-ships!_" I cried. "_They're overtaking us!_"

My cry brought Jhul Din back up into the pilot room, and standing

together with eyes riveted upon the space-chart we saw clearly that

with every moment, slowly but steadily, the serpent-ships behind were

drawing nearer, though we were moving at our utmost speed. Our ship,

battered and worn by its tremendous flight through the void from

universe to universe, and by the space-fights it had come through, was

a fraction slower than the new ships of our pursuers, and that fraction

of difference in speed, we saw, was bringing them closer upon us with

each passing minute. Yet there was a chance still, we knew, to gain the

Andromeda universe before they overtook us; so still at utmost velocity

we flashed on, toward the shining universe ahead.

On--on--the hours that followed, while we drove through the awful

void with the serpent-ships behind closing slowly and inexorably in

upon us, live in my memory only as a strange period of ceaseless,

rushing flight, with our eyes always upon the space-chart and upon

the brilliant disk-mass of light ahead. Twice we flashed through the

outskirts of great heat-regions glowing there in the void, and once

past the edge of one of the deadly areas of radio-active vibrations,

but ever after passing them our ship swung back toward the universe

ahead. That universe, as we hummed on hour upon hour, was changing

from a glowing disk of light into a great mass of individual points of

light, into a gigantic mass of stars that loomed in greater radiant

splendor before us with each passing hour. Green and red and yellow and

blue suns we could glimpse among its thronging thousands, and others

still white-hot with youth, shining with ever greater brilliance as we

drove through the void toward them.

Before us the great universe lay in all its true gigantic glory, when

we had covered two-thirds of the distance to it, but by that time our

eyes were not upon it at all, but upon the space-chart and the black

void behind us; since in the intervening hours the serpent-ships had

crept ever closer toward us, their swarm on the space-chart less than

an inch behind our racing ship-dot. Even that little gap, in the hours

that followed, was lessening, closing, while we three in the pilot room

watched it in tense silence. At last, with the blazing mass of suns of

the Andromeda universe stretched across the heavens but a dozen hours

ahead, we saw that the serpent-swarm on the chart was all but touching

our single ship-dot, saw that the end at last was at hand.

"They'll overhaul us in less than an hour!" exclaimed Jhul Din. "We'll

never even reach the Andromeda universe!"

To his outburst we made no answer, gazing in silence up at the big

space-chart, watching doom creep upon us. The serpent-swarm had crept

still farther upon us until its foremost dots seemed touching our own

ship-dot, its foremost racing craft in reach of our own. Then, gazing

through the rear distance-windows that projected from the pilot room's

sides, the big Spican uttered a low exclamation, pointing mutely

backward as we turned toward him. And as we gazed we saw, far behind us

there in the lightless void, a swarm of close-massed light-points that

steadily was largening, was drawing nearer toward us, toward our doom.

For it was the end, I knew. We had escaped death in a hundred forms in

the last days, but this we could not escape, for with the Andromeda

universe still hours away our chance of escape was gone. Dodge and

turn as we might, they would corner us, would hem us in; and though we

might destroy one or two of their half-thousand ships, by no miracle

could we hope to escape the rest. For a moment a deathly silence held

us as we stared back toward those nearing light-points, and then I

whirled around to the order-tube.

"Battle-positions--all of the crew to the ray-tubes!" I shouted, and as

I turned back to the other two I cried to them, "We'll let some of them

feel our rays before they end us!"

I heard Jhul Din shout his approval, saw Korus Kan's eyes burning as he

glanced back toward our pursuers, heard from beneath the cries of our

crew as they took up their positions at the ray-tubes, ready to smite a

last blow at our enemies before they overwhelmed us. Behind us in the

blackness the onrushing serpent-ships had grown from light-points to

great dark oval shapes with white-lit pilot rooms at their noses, the

score of great disk attraction-ships racing on among them. Ever closer

they were leaping, and I knew that in a moment more those disk-ships

would be near enough to grasp us, would glow with attractive force and

hold us helpless while the death-beams of the fighting-ships swept us.

But as we tensely waited for the end, still flashing on at our own full

speed, there was a sharp cry from Korus Kan, and we wheeled toward him

to find him regarding the pilot room's walls with eyes suddenly alight

with new hope.

"It's another radio-active vibration region!" he cried, pointing

toward the walls and controls that were beginning to flicker out with

the strange, fluorescent light we had always dreaded. "If we plunge

straight into it there's a chance we can shake off the pursuit!"

I caught my breath at the suggestion but in an instant saw that he

was right, that though we might meet death amid the disintegrating

vibrations, we might perhaps escape and throw off our pursuers, from

whom death was certain as things were.

"It's a chance!" I exclaimed. "Head straight into the radio-active

region, Korus Kan!"

He glanced swiftly at the instruments before him, swerved our

racing ship a little to the right, and then walls and floor and

mechanisms about us were glowing with ever-waxing misty light as we

drove in toward the great region's heart. I felt the same tingling

force flooding through me that I had already once experienced, as

our flying ship raced on, again swaying and spinning as it flashed

through the mighty ether-currents whose meeting and collision formed

the great region of vibrations about us, though outside was only the

same blackness as before. With every moment, though, our ship, our

mechanisms, our own bodies, were glowing with waxing light, while in

the darkness behind I saw that the great swarm of ships racing after

us was itself aglow now with light, as it, too, rushed into the great

radio-active region after us. And still, with a courage that matched

our own desperation, they were speeding after and closer to us,

undeterred even by the crumbling death that flooded space all about

them and us now.

Glowing ship and glowing bodies, force that rapidly was overcoming us

with a dizzy nausea and that was crumbling the walls and machinery

about us, the gathered suns of the Andromeda universe far ahead and

the glowing half-thousand pursuing ships just behind--all these were

but a mad chaos in our minds as we reeled on, farther and farther into

the mighty radio-active region. I heard even above the roaring of our

generators a clatter of falling metal somewhere toward the ship's rear,

while even about us the walls and all else were crumbling, like sugar

in water, glowing and disintegrating, as our whole ship was beginning

to break up. Now, too, as the great swarm of ships behind raced ever

closer a score or more of their number had drawn level with us, on our

right, attaining that position by slanting in to cut us off when we had

swerved in toward the radio-active region. And as pursued and pursuers

raced on, all glowing and disintegrating alike, that score of ships to

our right was pressing ever closer toward us.

Nearer they came, and then from their glowing ships toward our own

stabbed the pale death-beams, sweeping about us as we flashed on, a

shining mark. As they did so, though, our own red shafts burned out

swiftly, two of those attacking ships flaring to nothingness beneath

them, while with a swift turn to the left Korus Kan had avoided the

pale beams. That turn, though, took us now every moment outward once

more from the radio-active region's center, forcing us out once more

into clear space where the serpent-ships could annihilate us without

danger to themselves. Out and out we flashed, and though our ship

and all in it still glowed with the fluorescent light, that glow was

waning, and the clang of falling metal from beneath, from the ship's

disintegrating sides had ceased. Out--out--the score of ships to our

right joining with the greater mass behind us again, and all drawing

closer toward us, until the tingling nausea that had filled us had

vanished, the glowing light of our ships and theirs vanishing likewise.

Then, in one great mass, they were leaping again upon us.

Our lives at last within their grasp, they flashed after us and toward

us, and I knew that an instant more would see them about us, their

death-beams striking at us from all around as they encircled us. I

gazed ahead for a moment, to where the giant universe of Andromeda

stretched like a great rampart of burning suns across the black, cold

heavens, still hours away from us, and then gazed back to where the

close-massed hundreds of serpent-ships leapt after and upon us, the

death-beam tubes in their sides already swinging toward us. Then in

me, at that instant of onrushing doom, there flamed up a strange,

wild rage, a fierce, utter fury that had grown in me during all the

struggles and flights that had been ours since first we had met these

serpent-creatures. I wheeled around to Jhul Din and Korus Kan, my anger

breaking from me in a fiery shout.

"Turn the ship square around and halt, Korus Kan!" I cried. "We of the

Interstellar Patrol are not going to be picked off as we run--we're

going to turn and face them head-on!"

Korus Kan's eyes flamed at my cry, his hands moved swiftly on the

controls, and then our ship had curved suddenly about and had slowed

and stopped, swinging around and hanging motionless in space, facing

our enemies. Even as we had curved and stopped, they too had swiftly

halted, as though suspicious for the moment of some trap, and hung

before us in the black gulf of space, facing us. Then there was an

instant of utter stillness and silence, as there in the void we faced

them, our ship motionless in space, we three in the pilot room gazing

toward their own great swarm of ships hanging motionless before us;

the mighty Andromeda universe flaming in the heavens behind us, now,

and the far, dim glow of the dying serpent-universe in the blackness

ahead, and the misty little circle of light that was our own galaxy

away to the right; all these lay about us in a silence that was the

silence of doom. For a single moment the great tableau held, and then,

disdaining to use their attraction-ships upon us now, the great swarm

of serpent-ships leapt as one toward us, their hundreds of death-beams

stabbing toward us!

But as they did so, as they sprang upon us there in space, there

leapt from above and _behind_ us a mighty swarm of other ships--long,

slender, flat, gleaming ships entirely different from the oval-shaped

serpent-craft, or even from the cigar-like ships of our own

galaxy--long, flat ships like none we had ever seen before, that

flashed down over and past us straight upon the serpent-fleet! From

the sides of these strange new ships there projected thick, squat

cylinders that were pointed now toward the serpent-ships before us,

and though no ray or beam could be seen issuing from those cylinders,

the serpent-ships at which they were aimed were crumpling, were

contracting and folding up into shapeless masses of crumpled metal, as

though crushed in the grasp of a giant hand! And as that mighty swarm

of strange, flat ships flashed down upon the serpent-fleet that reeled

back and recoiled from its terrific blows, I heard a wild cry from

Korus Kan, as he and Jhul Din stared out with me.

"Strange ships attacking our pursuers!" he cried. "They're ships

that have come out from the Andromeda universe to save us from the

serpent-creatures' pursuit!"

_11. Into the Andromeda Universe_

As the mighty swarm of Andromeda ships from behind us drove down upon

the half-thousand serpent-craft ahead, I could only stare for a moment

in stupefied surprize, so stunning had been our sudden transition from

death to deliverance. I saw the long, flat craft of the Andromedans,

a full thousand in number, flashing down on the serpent-ships in one

great swoop, saw the latter, in groups, in dozens, in scores, crumpling

and constricting as the deadly cylinders of the Andromedan ships were

turned toward them. Within an instant, it seemed, a full two hundred of

the half-thousand serpent-ships had crumpled and whirled away beneath

the terrible, invisible force of the cylinders, though death-beams

were raging out thickly all about the swooping Andromedan ships. Then,

with almost half their fleet wiped out, the remaining three hundred

serpent-ships, including their score of great disk-attraction-ships,

had whirled around and were racing back into space toward their own

dying universe, fleeing from the terrific blows of the attacking ships

that had come out from the Andromeda universe ahead, just in time to

save us.

Now, as the serpent-fleet flashed from sight, into the void toward its

own universe, the thousand Andromedan ships massed swiftly and moved

toward our own, that hung still motionless there in the gulf of space.

In tense silence we watched them come, hoping that they might not set

us down, too, as enemies because of our serpent-ship, but they turned

none of their deadly cylinders toward us. Those cylinders, as I was

later to learn, were in reality projectors that shot forth a shaft of

invisible force, one that caused the ether about any ship it struck to

compress about that ship instantly with terrific force, compressing

thus into small compass the ether-vibrations that were the matter of

the ship, and thus crumpling that matter itself, in an instant. It

was a weapon fully as terrible as the crimson destruction-rays of

our galaxy's ships or the pale death-beams of the serpent-creatures,

a shaft of crumpling force that we knew could destroy us instantly.

Instead of loosing it upon us, though, they slanted down until one of

their foremost ships was hanging just above our own.

We guessed then that they meant to enter our ship, and in a moment our

guess was confirmed as the long, flat ship hovering above sank downward

until its lower surface was lying along the upper surface of our own

oval craft, the two touching. Then we heard a section of the underside

of the ship above sliding back, and a moment later, at my order, one of

our crew slid open our own upper space-door. The openings in the two

ships, in the upper side of ours and the lower side of theirs, were

thus together, pressed so closely by the weight of the upper ship as

it pressed down upon us that it formed a hermetically sealed opening

connecting the two. Then, down through that opening from the ship

above, down into the corridor of our ship and toward our pilot room,

there came a half-dozen of the Andromedans from the ship above us, a

half-dozen of the people of the Andromeda universe.

I do not know what weird and alien shapes we had expected to see in

these beings of a different universe, but I do know that never had

our imaginations envisaged creatures of so utterly strange a nature

as these that came toward us now. For they were _gaseous_! Tall

columns of misty green gas, that held always to the same pillar-like

outline, as unchanging of form as though of solid flesh, and that were

gliding along the corridor toward us! Upright, unchanging columns of

green, opaque vapor, from near the top of whose six feet of height

there branched out on each side a smaller arm of the same thick green

gas, arms that they moved at will, and in which some of them held

instruments and weapons! Tall, erect columns of thick, green vapor,

without features of any kind that we could see, that yet were living,

intelligent and powerful beings like ourselves! Their bodies, their two

arms, their very organs and features and senses formed of gas, just as

our bodies are solid, and that of a jellyfish liquid!

Down the corridor they came toward us, gliding smoothly forward,

halting just before us and surveying us, I knew, by whatever strange

sense of sight was within their gaseous bodies. Dumbly we stared

toward them, for the first time now wholly appreciating the immense

difference between us and them; then, at a loss for another gesture,

I held out my hand toward the foremost of them. Instantly his own arm

came out toward me, gripped my hand with a grip as solid as though that

arm had been of flesh instead of gas, a grasp that though cold was real

and tangible. When the one before me had withdrawn his grasp, then I

spoke aloud to him, but there came no reply. Instead the Andromedan

extended toward me, in the grasp of his other arm, a small globe of

what seemed misty glass, a few inches in diameter and mounted upon a

little metal base. As he held it, though, pressing a tiny button in

the base, the misty globe suddenly glowed with light, and then in it I

could see figures moving, as though in some tiny cinema-screen.

The scene in it was that of a great, gleaming-walled room, utterly

strange in appearance, with a mass of shining, unfamiliar apparatus

grouped about it, among which moved a dozen or more Andromedans like

those before me, upright columns of green gas gliding to and fro,

inspecting and tending the different mechanisms. Then all of them

grouped about a single one, a vast tube that I sensed was a great

telescope, which pointed out into the blackness of space, and down from

which there fell upon a broad white surface a swift-moving picture,

one of a single oval space-ship rushing through the void, with Korus

Kan, Jhul Din and myself visible in its white-lit pilot room, while

not far behind it there raced in pursuit of it a great swarm of

serpent-manned ships. Then the Andromedans grouped about that great

telescope were seen moving swiftly over to an apparatus at the room's

center, apparently one of communication; and the next moment the whole

scene had vanished, and was replaced by one of a thousand long, flat

ships--Andromedan ships--slanting swiftly upward from a great world and

into space. Then that, too, had clicked off; there was a flashing scene

of those same thousand ships leaping upon our pursuers as they had

done but a moment before; then all light in the little instrument had

vanished as the Andromedan before me snapped off its control button.

* * * * *

A moment we remained in silence, puzzled, until Korus Kan broke the

stillness with an exclamation. "It's a communication instrument, Dur

Nal," he exclaimed, "one that shows in visible pictures the thoughts

of whoever it is connected to--it's their method of communication with

each other, apparently."

I nodded now, with sudden understanding. "Then that's the way that they

discovered our peril--came to save us!" I said. "That's what they're

telling us!"

But now the Andromedan had held the little instrument forward to

me, and as I took it, in some perplexity, he silently indicated two

little round metal plates inset on its bottom, which he had grasped

when holding the thing and which I now grasped in turn, pressing

the tiny control button as I did so. The next instant a current of

thrilling force seemed racing up my arms, through my brain, and in

the little glowing sphere appeared only a confusion of vague forms.

Then, as my brain cleared, I concentrated my thoughts on our mission

and its reason; and at once, in the instrument's glowing sphere,

there appeared clearly the five thousand serpent-ships attacking our

universe, destroying our fleet by means of their death-beams and

attraction-ships, settling upon the worlds and suns of the Cancer

cluster. Then, with the shifting of my thoughts, there was a glimpse

of our ship flashing out into the void from our own universe toward

that of the Andromeda and then the little sphere had gone black as I

snapped off the button that controlled it.

For the moment we could not know whether we had been fully understood

by the beings before us, but the next instant one of them pointed with

a gaseous limb toward the gathered suns of the Andromeda universe,

flaring in the blackness ahead, and as we nodded and pointed also,

they stepped over beside us. The next moment the opening in the under

side of the ship above and the space-door in our own ship had clanged

shut, and as the whole great fleet of ships about us began to move

toward the Andromeda universe, Korus Kan opened up the power of our own

generators, moving smoothly along among them. Within moments more, the

strange, gaseous forms of the Andromedans standing there beside us,

our ship and all those about it were flashing at full speed toward the

great galaxy ahead.

From the ship's hull beneath I could hear an odd, grating sound, as of

the clash of metal on metal, that continued to come to my ears as we

flashed on, but in the moments, the hours that followed, I paid but

small attention to it, engrossed as we all were in the magnificent

spectacle of the universe ahead. Like a tremendous belt of suns across

the black heavens it was, largening in vastness and brilliance with

every moment that we flashed nearer, until by the time we had raced

toward it for a half-score of hours it seemed to fill all the firmament

before us with its hosts of flaming stars. We were flashing on in the

same course as the ships about us, heading toward a spot where there

shone two great yellow suns that were like twin wardens of this mighty

universe. And as we hummed through the void toward them, sweeping in

nearer to this great galaxy's edge, the ships about us and our own

ship, too, had begun to slacken their tremendous speed, until at last

at a reduced velocity we were driving in past the outmost suns of the

Andromeda universe.

The dull grating sound from beneath was persisting, still, but now

interest in all else had left me as there spread before and about me

the wonders of this stupendous universe. A universe it was as large as

our own, as large as the dying serpent-universe, but different from

either. For if ours was a young universe, with the majority of our

stars glowing with blue and white-hot youth, and the serpent-universe

an aged and dying one, with burned-out and waning crimson suns, this

one before us was a universe in its prime--a universe the vast majority

of whose suns were flaming yellow with their greatest splendor, a

golden galaxy of living stars infinitely different from the dim, dying

universe from which we had just escaped, and infinitely different,

too, from the giant, white young suns and raw, vast nebulæ of our own

youthful universe.

As we sped in between those gathered, flaming suns, though, as we drove

in past the edge of their great mass, my eyes began to take in their

position and arrangement, and as they did so I saw that not alone in

age or youthfulness was this universe different from any other I had

seen. For as we flashed into the thronging suns, past a great group

of them massed to our right, I saw that the suns of that group were

gathered in a great circle, a score of mighty flaming suns, each set in

position with mathematical exactness, forming a perfect circle as they

hung here in space, one of the two great yellow suns I had glimpsed

from afar having a place in that circle. And inside that mighty circle

of suns I glimpsed a vast mass of swarming planets--hundreds, thousands

even, of great, turning worlds that moved in regular orbits inside the

great ring of suns about them, lit and warmed perpetually by their

encircling fires.

Stupefied, stunned, by that tremendous sight, I did not, could not, for

the moment understand the significance of what I was seeing. But as we

flashed on past the great circle and its swarming enclosed planets,

as we approached another close group of suns, I saw that it, too, was

formed of a score or more of great suns grouped in a perfect circle

like the first, and that inside that circle of suns there swung also

hundreds and thousands of whirling worlds! And beyond it shone another

mighty ring of suns, and another, and others, as far as the eye could

reach, all the suns in all this tremendous universe being grouped by

the score into great circles inside of which swung countless planets!

And then, at last, there broke upon my reeling brain the meaning of

what I was seeing.

"Suns in circles!" I cried, as I gazed out across that mighty vista.

"They've done this themselves--consciously, deliberately! They've

placed all the suns of their universe in great circle-groups, so that

inside those circles their countless peoples can exist!"

For I saw, now, that it was so, that only by intelligent design could

the countless swarms of thronging suns about us ever have been placed

in these mathematically perfect circles, inside which their great

planets swung. Long ago their universe must have been much like our

own, a great chaos of suns reeling blindly in all directions, swarming

like a vast hive of stars, each with its own few planets moving about

it. But as their numbers had increased, as they had come to need every

world, every planet for their existence, they had grasped their suns

with titanic, unguessable forces, had swung them from their accustomed

chaos into order, into great circles, placing inside those circles all

their countless worlds--worlds of which thousands could then exist

upon the light and heat of a mere score of suns by having those suns

grouped in a ring about them.

Now, driving in past great circle after circle of flaming suns, past

the countless planets that moved inside those circles, we were flashing

on with the ships about us toward the center of this strange and

mighty universe. On our space-chart I could see that thick about us

were great masses of interstellar traffic, which cleared away before

us as we drove inward. Circle after circle of fiery suns we were

leaving behind, mass upon mass of swarming planets inside, but never

on our space-charts showed any wandering dark-stars, or meteor-swarms,

or vagabond, sunless worlds, all matter in this universe apparently

having been swept up by the Andromedans and used as habitations for

their races, inside the great sun-circles. A gigantic mass of perfectly

grouped stars they stretched about us, those sun-circles, filling

the heavens about us; but now, far ahead, there shone out ever more

brilliant at the center of this great universe another great circle of

suns, that seemed the largest in all this universe. A score of titanic,

flaming stars, they hung there at this galaxy's center, and it was

toward these that our racing ships were heading.

Toward them we gazed with intense interest as our ships fled on,

but suddenly were startled back to realization of our immediate

surroundings by a great rumbling and grating from beneath, our ship

swaying to one side and heeling sickeningly over, even as it flashed

ahead. In sudden tense silence we stood, listening to that rumbling and

cracking beneath, and then up from the speech-tube beside me there came

a startled cry from one of our crew below.

"The ship's splitting!" he cried. "The walls have been grating

and giving ever since we ran through that radio-active

disintegrating-region--and now the ship's beginning to break in two!"

There was an instant of silence in the pilot room, the only sound

that fearful grating rumble from beneath as gradually the ship's

walls, weakened and crumbled by the disintegrating vibrations of the

radio-active region through which we had plunged, began at last to

split. A moment more, we knew, would see our ship riven apart there

in space, with instant annihilation the fate of all of us. Silent,

stunned, for a moment we stood there, the Andromedans beside us

comprehending the situation as well as ourselves; then I whirled around

to Korus Kan, flung my arm up toward the great central sun-circle that

lay now full ahead, nearest of all the sun-groups to our onward-racing

ships.

"Full speed!" I cried to him. "There's a chance still that we can get

to those suns and worlds before the ship breaks up!"

With that cry the Antarian flung open the power-control, and instantly

our ship, rumbling and groaning still as its walls gave about us,

plunged on at utmost speed. I knew that we had perhaps a chance in a

thousand to reach the worlds inside that sun-circle before our craft

broke beneath our feet, but it was our only chance, and as we reeled

on now with the generators roaring their greatest power, and with a

thunderous, cracking roar rising from beneath also as our walls parted,

it was with the consciousness that the next few moments would seal our

fate. The great fleet of Andromedan ships about us had leapt forward

with us, were behind and about us, but for the moment all our attention

was centered upon the great circle of suns ahead, largening before us

swiftly as with one last great burst of speed our ship shot through the

void toward it.

Our ship swayed blindly over, now, even as it reeled on through space,

another great crash of riven metal coming to our ears from beneath,

the floor slanting steeply up beneath us. Flung against the wall as

we were, though, Korus Kan clung still to the controls, heading our

swaying flying ship straight on toward the sun-circle, until in a

moment more we had reached that circle, were slanting downward at the

same terrific speed above that great ring of mighty suns. Inside that

vast circle there moved a mighty swarm of thronging worlds, as in the

other sun-circles, but at the very center of this vast swarm of planets

there hung motionless a single gigantic planet, largest by far of

all in this universe, a huge central world down toward which our own

crazily swaying ship and the ships about us were slanting!

Down--down--there was a sudden rush of air about our ship as we shot

toward the surface of the great planet, and I had a flashing glimpse of

that surface, scores of miles beneath, through our window--a smooth,

park-like surface swarming with hordes of the gaseous Andromedans

and with ascending and descending ships, a surface in which I seemed

to glimpse innumerable round, well-like openings, but upon which I

could see no buildings. Abruptly, though, even as I glanced downward,

there came a tremendous final cracking from our ship's center, each

end tipped sharply down from that center as the crumbling craft broke

cleanly in half, and then the two wrecked halves of it were whirling

down toward the surface of the great world far below!

_12. The Council Decides_

Of the moment following, while we rushed thus down to death, flung

into a corner of the pilot room by the ship's splitting, I remember

most clearly the rush of cold air that shrieked through our falling

half. Had our ship broken in empty space instead of in the air of that

great world's atmosphere, we would have met instant annihilation;

since even the gaseous Andromedans, as I was later to find, could not

live save in air, like ourselves, their gaseous bodies disintegrating

in any other element. For the moment, though, as we flashed down

toward the surface of the world beneath, it seemed that death for

us had been delayed but a moment. We were whirled crazily around as

our wrecked half of the ship fell, and through the window I had a

glimpse of the ground beneath, rushing up to meet us with appalling

speed. I tensed for the crash, and for death, as it leapt up toward

us--nearer--nearer----

There was a hoarse cry from Jhul Din, and I glimpsed in the next

instant a dark, great shape that swooped down past and beneath us from

above. The next instant, just as I waited for the annihilating impact

with the ground, there was a slight jar, a clang of metal against

metal from beneath, and then swiftly, miraculously, our wild fall was

slackening. In another moment the ground was just beneath us, and

smoothly and slowly we sank downward, coming to rest upon it without a

jar! I staggered up to the window, gazing forth, stunned by that sudden

escape from inescapable annihilation, and then saw the explanation of

it. Our half of the wrecked ship was resting upon the back of one of

the great, flat Andromedan ships, that had flashed down under it and

caught it upon itself, bearing us down to the ground and saving us from

the crash and from death!

A moment more and we were stumbling out of the pilot room, down to the

ground from the Andromedan ship on which we rested. As we reached it I

saw that the other falling half of our ship had been saved in the same

way by another Andromedan craft, lying close beside us on that craft

with the members of our crew in it pouring out to join us. Another

instant and they stood with us, a vast mass of the gliding, gaseous

Andromedans that swarmed on this world's surface having collected

about us, a strange, silent horde that I knew were contemplating us

with their alien sense of sight. Quickly toward us, though, came the

half-dozen Andromedans who had been with us in the ship and had escaped

with us, leading us now through the throngs of gaseous figures about us

toward some destination of their own.

As we moved along with them, though, our interest was not so much in

our destination as in the stupendous and unparalleled scene about

us. Far away to the distant horizons stretched the smooth surface of

this great world, covered with an even growth of jet-black sod that

gave it an extraordinarily park-like appearance, with here and there

tall, spiked growths or plants of the same ebon black. That blackness,

as I guessed, was due to the perpetual, fierce light of the great

ring of suns that belted the firmament overhead, the circle of suns

at whose center this mighty planet hung, and whose ceaseless light

would naturally give to this world's vegetation a pigmentation of

deepest black. The belt of giant suns above, the countless swarms of

Andromedans about us, like gliding pillars of misty green gas, the

ebon vegetation, the masses of mighty ships that rose and descended

ceaselessly in the broad areas set aside for them--all these held us

silent with the silence of awe, as with our guides we moved on.

It was none of these things, though, wonderful as they were, that

intrigued me most of all about us--it was the total absence of

buildings, of visible structures or habitations, on all the surface of

this world. The smooth black sod, the countless Andromedan throngs, the

departing and arriving ships--these were all that were visible about

us, all except a great number of round, well-like shafts that opened in

the ground everywhere about us. These shafts were some six feet across,

and were placed always in pairs, or groups of two, and as I gave them

more attention I saw, in a moment, that they held the answer to the

absence of all buildings about us. For into them and out of them the

gaseous Andromedans were moving in ceaseless streams, moving straight

into one empty shaft and sinking smoothly downward out of sight, upheld

by some force at the shaft's bottom beneath that nullified gravity

just enough to make it possible for them to float gently down. From

the other shaft of the pair, too, other Andromedans would be rising

smoothly upward through the air, reaching the surface and gliding

away, that other ascending shaft having at its bottom a constant force

sufficient not only to nullify completely the pull of gravity but to

give all in the shaft a slight upward thrust.

Into these shafts, as we moved past them, I glanced down, and saw

that far beneath they opened into brilliant-lit rooms and halls, some

of great size. I understood, then, how they had come to be used, how

the Andromedans, their vast hordes cramped upon the surface of their

worlds, had removed all buildings from the surface and had sunk them

deep in the ground itself, subterranean buildings that could be entered

or left by the ascending and descending shafts, and that gave them all

the surface of their worlds free for their ships and to move about on.

In and out of the great buildings sunken in the ground beneath us were

moving constant streams of Andromedans, up and down the shafts; and now

we saw that before us lay a pair of such shafts much greater in size

than all others we had seen, and the center of a great rush of traffic

of the gaseous beings about us. It was toward these greater shafts that

our Andromedan companions were leading us, the figures before us giving

way as we approached.

A moment more and we stood at the edge of the descending shaft, the

Andromedans beside us motioning toward it and moving over its edge,

sinking smoothly downward. Hesitatingly I followed, stepped from the

edge into the empty air of the shaft; but the next moment my fear left

me, for instead of plunging down a dead weight, I and my companions

who had followed me were sinking downward as gently as though gripped

and upheld by unseen hands. Down we floated, through the great shaft

bright-lit by the belted suns above, down until we were sinking down

out of the shaft itself into a vast, white-lit hall that stretched

away for a great distance in all directions from us, and down from the

center of whose ceiling, where the two great shafts opened from above,

we were sinking.

* * * * *

Smoothly we sank downward from the great hall's ceiling to its floor,

landing upon a great disk inset in that floor beneath the descending

shaft and glowing with dark purple light, the glowing force that

combatted gravitation enough in the shaft above it to allow us to float

gently down. For the moment, though, I paid not so much attention to

it as to the strange, vast hall in which we now stood. Colossal in

size and circular of shape, the mighty, white-lit room was as large or

larger even than the great Council Hall of the Federated Suns, in our

own universe, though it was far different in appearance. There were

in it no ranks of seats, the smooth floor being divided by crossing

black lines into thousands of squares of equal size, and in each of

those squares there rested, motionless, one of the gaseous Andromedans,

thousands upon thousands of them, like massed columns of thick green

vapor, being grouped in the great room about us.

We stood ourselves on a section of the floor at the room's very center,

raised a few feet above the rest of the floor, and except for the two

purple-glowing disks beneath the ascension and descension shafts the

only object upon this raised portion was a great globe of what seemed

misty glass, exactly like the tiny one with which the Andromedans had

first communicated with us, but of vastly greater size, being some

dozen feet in diameter. Toward this, as we hesitated there at the

center of that gigantic assemblage of strange, silent figures, there

moved the leader of the Andromedans who had accompanied us. He grasped

with his two gaseous arms the metal studs that projected out from the

great globe's base, and at once the misty sphere glowed with inward

light, while in it appeared the thousand Andromedan ships, flashing out

into the void, rescuing us from the serpent-fleet, and bringing us back

into their own universe, a swift succession of explanatory scenes.

This explanation completed, the Andromedan moved back from the great

sphere and motioned me toward it. Slowly I stepped forward, sensing

the gaze of the massed, silent thousands on me. I knew that it was the

supreme moment of our mission, the moment for which we had battled

our way through three universes, the chance to obtain from this great

council of the Andromedans the help that might save our universe. I

glanced back to the anxious faces of my friends, drew a long breath,

and then grasped the two studs before me, concentrating all my thoughts

on what I wished to express, as the big sphere above glowed with inward

light again, the thrilling current from it rushing into my brain.