In the glowing globe now appeared our universe, a great galaxy of stars

floating in space like their own. Swiftly, with shifting thoughts,

I showed them its throngs of peopled worlds, the traffic that swept

between its suns, the ordered life of its teeming, dissimilar races.

Then as my thoughts shifted again they saw the first five thousand

serpent-ships rushing in upon that galaxy, destroying all our fleet

and settling upon the suns and worlds of the Cancer cluster, saw us

fleeing inward and then turning to capture one of the serpent-ships

by boarding it in mid-space. Then, briefly, the globe flashed forth

the interior of our own great Council Hall, with our Council Chief

exhibiting and explaining the records of the serpent-people which we

had captured in their ship. In a swift flash I explained the meaning of

those records, a flash that showed the serpent-people, masters of the

suns and worlds of our own universe, sailing out with increased powers

to attack the Andromeda universe, and as that flashing scene showed

in the great globe I saw a silent stir of excitement run through the

massed thousands about me.

In another moment, though, the globe's scene had shifted back to the

Council Hall, with ourselves receiving our orders from the Council

Chief, entering our captured serpent-ship and slanting up and outward,

bursting past the patrolling serpent-ships, through the void of outer

space, only to be captured by the other serpent-ships that had come out

to meet us. Our flight then to the serpent-universe, our glimpse of the

vast serpent-fleet being built, and the colossal death-beam cone, and

the escape of Jhul Din appeared in swift succession. Then came our own

strange captivity, our rescue by Jhul Din and escape outward from the

serpent-universe through the great space-forts, and our pursuit and

final rescue by the thousand Andromedan ships. Then, as our final plea,

I showed the vast hordes of serpent-ships and their irresistible mighty

death-beam cone sailing out from the dying universe toward our own,

rushing upon our galaxy and wiping out all its races. The great globe

then went dark, as I released my hold upon its studs and stepped back

from it. Our mission was ended, and its success or failure lay in the

hands of the massed Andromedans about us.

There was a moment of stillness, a moment in which, I knew, the fate

of our universe and of all in it was being decided, a moment in which

the silence of the mighty hall seemed thunderous to our strained

nerves. Then I saw each of the thousands of Andromedans in the hall

reach down toward two smaller metal studs that projected from the

floor before each, and as the great globe beside me glowed again with

light, I sensed quickly that upon it would be registered the decision

of the majority of the great council about me, the method used by them

in reaching and registering a decision. Tensely we watched the great

glowing globe, and then in it appeared another scene.

It was a scene of countless ships, gleaming flat Andromedan ships,

gathering from all the suns and worlds of their universe, upon the

giant central world where we were now, tens of thousands of great ships

that rose from that world, slanting up and outward. Among them were

a hundred ships quite different from the rest, great hemispheres of

gleaming metal that rose as smoothly and swiftly as the rest, domed

side uppermost; and as though in explanation there flashed in the globe

a swift picture of those same hundred domed craft hanging above great

suns in the Andromeda universe, projecting down beside and around

them great walls and sheaths of the dark-purple glowing force that

neutralized gravity, so that those suns, screened from the pull of

the suns on their right by a great wall of that glowing purple force,

would move away to the left in answer to the pull of the suns there,

or vice versa. These, I realized swiftly, were the great sun-swinging

ships by means of which the Andromedans had placed their suns in

ordered circles, and now in the globe with all the tens of thousands

of ordinary flat Andromedan ships they were flashing out into space.

Then came a brief scene of the whole vast Andromedan fleet flashing

down out of space upon the dying universe, bursting through the

opening in the great blue-force wall around it and attacking all the

serpent-creatures' suns and worlds!

The next instant the globe had gone dark again, but I knew now what

the decision of the council was, and I whirled around to my friends

with excitement flaming up in me. "They're going to help us!" I cried.

"They're going to mass all their great fleet and with it and their

sun-swinging ships sail to attack the serpent-universe!"

I can not remember now the moments that followed that momentous

decision, so overwhelming to us then was the consciousness that we had

succeeded in our mission, had dared the awful void and the perils of

three universes and had procured the help that might save our galaxy.

I remember being led by our Andromedan guides into and through other

rooms off the great hall; of the thousands of gaseous figures of the

council crowding up the shaft toward the surface above, to speed to

every quarter of their universe and summon all their fighting-ships; of

Jhul Din noisy with exultation and Korus Kan quiet as ever, but with

gleaming eyes. Then all about me seemed dissolving and darkening as

the utter fatigue of our strenuous last hours overcame me, a fatigue

through which only my knowledge of our mission's importance had so far

borne me, and beneath which now I sank into dreamless sleep.

* * * * *

When I awoke I sensed that hours had passed, though Jhul Din and our

followers lay still unconscious about me. Leaving them there, I strode

out of the room and into the great Council Hall, whose stupendous

circle lay empty now and bare, seeming immeasurably more vast in its

white-lit emptiness than when filled with the thousands of gaseous

Andromedans. I moved across it to the raised section at the center,

stepped upon the purple-glowing disk beneath the ascending shaft, and

then, thrust upward by the force of that disk, was moving smoothly

toward the round opening in that ceiling and on up the shaft until

I had burst out into the unceasing light of the belt of suns above,

stepping sidewise onto the ground as I did so. And now I saw that Korus

Kan, not a dozen feet away, had turned and was coming toward me.

"Their ships are gathering, Dur Nal!" he exclaimed, eyes alight.

"You've slept for nearly a day, there below, and their ships have been

coming in those hours from every sun and world in their universe!"

I swept my gaze about, a certain awe filling me as I saw now the

tremendous forces that had gathered and were gathering here on the

surface of this giant central world. A tremendous circular area of

miles in diameter around us, around the shafts that led down to the

hall of the council, had been cleared of all else and was now a single

vast gathering-point for the thousands of ships that were massing

here. Even while we gazed, the air above was being darkened by the

swarms of those ships that shot ceaselessly downward, landing in this

great circular area, drawing up in regular rows and masses. In tens of

thousands they were grouped about us, a tremendous plain of gleaming

metal ships that stretched as far as the eye could reach.

At the center of this vast plain of ships, though, there lay a round

clearing, in which we ourselves stood, a clearing in which there rested

only a hundred other ships, different far from the thousands around

them, a hundred domed, gleaming craft like giant hemispheres of metal.

Not a thousand feet from us lay these great, strange craft, their

space-doors open and their Andromedan crews busy among the masses of

strange mechanisms inside, and I recognized them instantly as the great

craft I had seen in the thought-pictures in the Council Hall below, the

mighty ships whose projected sheaths and walls of dark-purple force

could move giant suns at will.

"The sun-swinging ships!" I exclaimed, and Korus Kan nodded, his eyes

upon them also.

"Yes," he said, "they'll be the most powerful weapons of the whole

great fleet--with them we can crash the suns and worlds of the

serpent-universe together at will."

Now, though, we turned our attention from them to the tens of thousands

of ships that lay about us. In and out of those ships, too, were moving

countless masses of Andromedans, swift-gliding gaseous figures who were

inspecting and testing the mechanisms of their craft and the cylinders

in their sides that shot forth the crumpling shafts of force. They were

making all ready for our start, we knew, for the battle that must ensue

when we poured down on the serpent-universe, and we strode over toward

them. Already we had learned that the controls and mechanisms of the

Andromedan ships were much like those of the serpent-ships, their speed

being fully as great, but some features of them were still strange to

me. A dozen steps only we took toward them, though, and then stopped

short.

For down out of the sunlight above was slanting toward us a

close-massed swarm of ships that seemed different from the masses of

ships that were landing ceaselessly about us, that moved more slowly,

more deliberately. Down it came while we watched it, standing there,

seeing it change from a far swarm of black dots in the sunlight above

to a mass of long dark shapes, that were becoming clearer to our eyes

each moment--shapes that, I saw with a sudden great leap of my heart,

were not long and flat, but oval!

"_They're serpent-ships!_" Korus Kan's great cry stabbed like a

sword-blade of sound toward me. "They're the serpent-ships that pursued

us to this universe--the three hundred that escaped when we were

rescued--they've seen this great fleet gathering and have come to

strike a blow at it!"

Serpent-ships! My mind was racing with superhuman speed in that instant

as they drove down toward us, and I saw that the Antarian was right,

that these were the three hundred that had escaped when we were rescued

by the Andromedans, and that we thought had fled back to their own

universe. Instead they had turned and followed us, knowing that we

meant to gather forces to attack their universe, had flashed into the

Andromeda universe toward this central world, unseen among the swarms

of other ships that were gathering here, and now were swooping down

with their score of great disk attraction-ships lowermost, driving down

toward us in a fierce, reckless attack! In a single instant it all

flashed plain in my mind, and then Korus Kan and I had whirled around,

and he was racing back toward the hundred domed sun-swinging ships

behind us.

"I'll warn these hundred ships!" he yelled, as I turned too and raced

toward the nearest of the thousands of fighting-ships about us.

Even as I ran toward those thousands of ships, though, their Andromedan

crews still unaware of their peril, I saw the massed serpent-ships

above slanting straight down toward the hundred domed craft behind

me, their attraction-ships hanging motionless above those craft for a

moment. I had reached the Andromedan fighting-ships, now, and as the

crews of the nearest glided forth to meet me I cried out, pointing

upward. They saw the serpent-ships swooping down from above, and then

were throwing themselves into their own ships. I raced into one with

them, up to the pilot room set near the stem on its long flat upper

surface. The Andromedans beside me flung back the controls, then, and

our ship and the ships about us were leaping up like light toward the

down-rushing serpent-ships.

At the same moment I saw Korus Kan racing into one of the domed

sun-swinging ships above which hovered the score of attraction-ships,

saw the doors of those domed ships clanging shut as they prepared to

escape from the menace above, since they could project their mighty

purple force downward only, and would thus be helpless if caught in

the attraction-grip of the disk-ships above. A moment more and those

hundred domed craft, the most powerful weapon of the great Andromedan

fleet, would be safe, I knew. But in that moment, as the three hundred

serpent fighting-ships dashed down toward us, I saw the score of

hovering attraction-ships glow suddenly with flickering light; the

hundred sun-swinging ships beneath were pulled smoothly upward by that

tremendous attractive force; and then the attraction-ships, grasping

the hundred domed craft that were the heart of our fleet, were racing

straight up and outward into space!

_13. The Sailing of the Fleet_

As that score of glowing disk-ships, with our own hundred sun-swinging

craft in their grip, flashed up and out of sight, our fighting-ships

were flashing upward with the three hundred fighting-ships of the

serpent-creatures racing down to meet us. Then, before we could swerve

aside from their mad downward charge to pursue the attraction-ships,

they had met us, and in all the world about us there was nothing for

the moment but crashing and striking ships. Even as they had flashed

down upon us, and we up to meet them, the invisible shafts of force

from our cylinders had stabbed up and crossed their downward-reaching

death-beams, so that scores of their own ships had crumpled and

collapsed in the instant before we met them, scores of ours in turn

driving crazily forward and sidewise as the pale beams wiped all life

from them in that same moment. As we met them, though, it seemed that

our ships and theirs were all to perish alike in crashes in mid-air,

without further need of weapons, so terrific was the impact.

All about us in that moment I glimpsed ships smashing squarely into

down-rushing serpent-ships, while our own craft spun and whirled as

racing ships grazed along its sides. Then, hanging in the air there

a scant mile above the ground, we whirled and grappled with the

serpent-craft in a fierce, wild struggle. Their whole aim, we knew,

was to keep us occupied long enough to permit the escape of their

attraction-ships with our own sun-swinging craft in their grasp, while

our object, in turn, was to brush aside these serpent-ships before us

and race in pursuit of the attraction-ships. Charge and struggle as we

might, though, in the moments following we could not break loose from

the fury of the serpent-creatures' attack, who drove toward us with

death-beams whirling in all the mad recklessness of despair.

I saw Andromedan ships all about us driving aimlessly away as those

pale beams struck them, saw others destroyed by serpent-ships that

crashed deliberately into them, and then pouring up from beneath came

the masses of the great fleet beneath, thousands of ships that raced

up and around the struggling serpent-ships, crumpling and destroying

them with countless invisible shafts of force from their cylinders.

Within another moment the last of the enemy craft had vanished, but by

that time our own ship and a half-thousand others were flashing up in

pursuit of the attraction-ships.

Up, up we raced--up until the giant world was but a tiny ball beneath,

hanging at the center of the great ring of suns--but then we stopped,

and hung motionless. For we were, we saw, too late. About us there

stretched only the far-reaching circles of flaming suns that made up

the Andromeda universe, with no sign of the attraction-ships or their

prey. In those moments that the struggling serpent-craft had held us

back, the attraction-ships had flashed out from this universe into the

boundless gulf of space, with the hundred sun-swinging craft in their

grasp, with Korus Kan himself in one of those ships. On none of our

space-charts were they visible, safe from our pursuit out in the void,

and we knew that somewhere in that void our sun-swinging craft and all

in them were meeting their end, held in the relentless grasp of the

attraction-ships and destroyed by them, since the sun-swinging craft

could project their own terrific forces only downward. We were too

late. Silently, slowly, we slanted back down toward the great central

world.

As we came to rest there, among the tens of thousands of other gathered

ships, I saw Jhul Din and our followers, aroused from beneath by the

battle, running forward to meet me. I saw him glance about as he came

toward me, inquiry in his glance, and then I shook my head.

"We've lost the most powerful weapon of the whole Andromedan fleet," I

told him, slowly. "And we've lost, too, Korus Kan."

I think that in the hours that followed, while the last thousands of

ships swept in from all quarters of the Andromeda universe to gather

around us, it was the loss of our friend that lay heavier on the minds

of both myself and the Spican than that of the hundred sun-swinging

ships. Those hundred ships, we knew, would have enabled us to wreck all

the serpent-universe, whereas now we must meet them ship to ship, and

trust to courage and fighting-power alone to win for us. Yet even their

loss seemed small to us beside that of the friend with whom we two had

roved all the ways of our galaxy in the cruisers of the Interstellar

Patrol, with whom we had dared across the void and through the

serpent-universe and its perils, toward this Andromeda universe.

Silent, though, we remained, watching the thousands of long, flat ships

massing about us, and it was still in silence that I received from the

Andromedan leaders the knowledge that I had been chosen to command

their vast fleet in its great attack, since I was familiar with the

serpent-universe which we were to attack.

* * * * *

A half-dozen hours after the raid of the serpent-ships, the last of the

Andromedan craft had sped in from the farthest suns of their universe,

and a full hundred thousand mighty ships covered the surface of the

great world as far as the eye could reach, gleaming there beneath the

light of the belted suns above. Long, grim and ready they waited,

their gaseous Andromedan crews alert at the controls, while before us

lay in the central clearing our own long, flat flag-ship. In it, too,

the Andromedan crew stood ready, the scant score of my own strange

followers among them, its space-door open and waiting for our start.

Standing beside it, though, Jhul Din and I paused; then I turned back

to where the score or more of Andromedans that were their leaders, the

chiefs of their great council, stood.

Tall, steady figures of strange, thick green gas they stood there,

regarding me, I knew. They had gathered all their forces to save a

universe alien to themselves, to crush the serpent-peoples, and had

placed all those forces under the command of myself, an alien to them.

The greatness of their spirit, the calm, vast magnanimity of them,

struck home to me in that moment, and impulsively I reached a hand out

toward them once more, felt it grasped and gripped as though by solid

flesh by a score of gaseous arms; a moment in which, across all the

differences of mind and shape, the beings of two universes gripped

hands in kinship of spirit. Then I had turned from them, and with Jhul

Din was moving into our great ship, up to the pilot room, where the

Spican took his position at the controls. The space-door below slammed

shut, our generators throbbed suddenly, and then we were slanting

smoothly upward.

Before me stood a tall, square instrument bearing a bank of black

keys--keys that transmitted to the ships of our vast fleet my formation

and speed orders, as I pressed them. I pressed one now, as we shot

upward, glimpsed a long rank of ships on the ground behind and beneath

us rising smoothly after us in answer, pressed another and saw another

rank rising and following, until within a few moments more the whole

of the vast fleet, a hundred thousand gleaming ships, had risen and

was driving up and outward, with our flag-ship in the van. Up we

moved, until we were slanting up over the ring of mighty suns that

encircled the great central worlds and the swarms of smaller planets,

that central world vanishing behind us as we flashed on, and the great

circle of suns about it, and the suns beside us, all dropping smoothly

behind.

Out between those great circles of suns we moved, our great fleet in

a long, streaming line to avoid all danger of collisions with the

suns and worlds about us. I saw the Andromedans in the pilot room

with me standing motionless by its windows as we flashed on past the

circled suns and swarming worlds of their universe, knew that they were

watching those suns and worlds drop behind as they moved out to the

great struggle that would decide the fate of their universe as well

as of my own. Then at last we were racing out between the last great

circles of suns, out over the edge of the Andromeda universe into the

blackness and emptiness of outer space once more.

Now as the great darkness of the void lay before us, I pressed the

keys before me in swift succession, and at once the thousands of

ships behind me leapt into a new formation, that of a colossal

hollow pyramid that flashed through space with my flag-ship at its

apex. Faster and faster our great fleet shot out into the void, the

tremendous mass of ships behind me uniformly increasing their speed,

until at last at our utmost velocity we were racing on toward the

faint, wraith-like glow of the serpent-universe ahead.

Outward, into the darkness and silence of the eternal void, we were

flashing once more, but as I stood with Jhul Din there in the pilot

room, watching the great Andromeda universe dwindling in the darkness

behind us, no exultation filled me. We had done what none in our galaxy

ever before had done, had crossed the gulf and procured the aid with

which we were racing to crush our enemies before they could pour down

upon us, but my thoughts were not on these things but on the friends we

were leaving behind us. Somewhere out in the void from that Andromeda

universe, Korus Kan had gone to his death with the sun-swinging ships,

and as we sped on through the void toward the serpent-universe it was

the thought of that that held our minds rather than that of the great

battle before us.

Hour upon hour of swift flight was dropping behind us as we raced

steadily and smoothly on, detouring far around the great heat-regions

and radio-active regions that we encountered, heading on toward the

serpent-universe that was glowing ever broader before us. Smooth,

immeasurable and endless they seemed, those hours of swift and steady

flight, but at last we became aware that they were coming to an end,

the dying universe ahead a great dim glow across all the blackness

of the firmament. Ever our eyes hung upon that misty region of light

as we flashed nearer and nearer to it, and ever the same doubt, the

same wonder, rose and grew in our minds. Could we, really, crush and

destroy the serpent-peoples in this strange universe? What would be the

outcome of the tremendous battle we must fight in it to prevent the

serpent-hordes from pouring across space toward our own universe?

Before us now the somber splendor of the dying universe filled the

heavens, a vast mass of dead and dying suns, black and burned-out stars

and suns of smoky crimson, glowing in the blackness of space like the

embers of a mighty, dying fire. Around that great, dim-glowing mass we

could make out the gigantic shell of flickering blue light, all but

invisible, that surrounded it, the titanic and impenetrable wall of

vibrations that enclosed it. In toward that wall our vast fleet was

racing, moving at slackening speed as I touched a key before me, until

at last the mighty flickering barrier loomed close ahead, the single

opening in it, guarded by the huge space-forts on each side, lying

straight before us. And as we drew within sight of that opening we saw,

hanging in space just inside it, massed solidly across it, a thousand

oval ships!

"The serpent-ships!" I exclaimed. "They're going to hold the gate of

their universe against us!"

Jhul Din was staring at them as though puzzled. "But why only a

thousand ships?" he said. "Why haven't they massed all their great

fleet there at the gate----"

But I had turned, had pressed the keys before me in swift succession,

and at once our tremendous fleet had slowed and smoothly halted,

hanging there in space. Then, as I depressed still other keys, our vast

mass of ships split smoothly into three separate masses, my flag-ship

at the van of the central mass, the others moving to right and to left

of us. A moment our three great masses of ships hung there, and then

those on either side of us had flashed toward the great space-forts

that guarded each side of the great opening, while our own central

mass, my ship at its head, drove straight in toward the great opening

itself!

Straight toward and into the opening raced our close-massed ships

and then the next moment it seemed that all the universe about was

transformed into a single awful mass of pale beams that stabbed

toward and through us from the space-forts on each side and from the

close-massed ships ahead. How our own ship escaped annihilation in that

first moment of terrific, reeling shock, I can not guess; since behind

and about us scores of our ships were driving crazily away, their

occupants annihilated by the deadly beams. Yet from all our own craft,

reeling blindly as they were there in the opening, our cylinders were

loosing their shafts of invisible force upon the space-forts to each

side and upon the serpent-ships that leapt toward us from ahead.

Then as those ships met ours, there in the narrow opening with the huge

towering space-forts at each side, there ensued a moment of battle so

terrific--battle more awful in its concentrated fury than any I had

ever yet experienced--that it seemed impossible that ships and living

beings could fight thus and live. Terrific was the scene about us--the

vast black vault of infinite outer space behind us, the far-flung,

dim-glowing mass of the dying universe before us, the gigantic wall of

pale blue flickering light that separated the two, the single opening

in that wall, flanked by the titanic metal space-forts, in which our

thousands of close-massed ships charged forward toward the onrushing

serpent-ships.

* * * * *

Ships were crashing and smashing as we met them, death-beams were

whirling thick from their ships and from the huge space-forts,

serpent-craft were crumpling and collapsing beneath our shafts of

force--and still our own ships were reeling away in scores as the

death-beams found them. I knew that not for long could we continue this

suicidal combat, since though the serpent-ships before us were being

swiftly wiped out, the space-forts on each side still played their

beams upon us with deadly effect. The other two divisions of our great

fleet, dashing to attack the space-forts from outside while we battled

there in the opening between them, had been thrust back, I saw, from

each attack by the masses of pale beams that sprang from the forts.

But as the whole struggle hung thus in doubt, as our ships fell in

fierce battle there in the opening beneath the beams of the forts, I

saw a score of ships among those attacking the right-hand fort drive

suddenly toward that fort with all their terrific utmost speed, leaping

toward it like great thunderbolts of metal. From the great castle the

death-beams sprang toward that score of ships, sweeping through them

and wiping all life instantly from them, but before the ships had time

to swerve or reel aside from that mad onward flight their terrific

speed had carried them onward, and with a mighty, shattering collision

they had crashed straight into the great fort's side.

I saw the great metal walls of the space-fort buckling and collapsing

beneath that awful impact, and then all the space-fort had

collapsed also, like a thing of paper, crushing within itself the

serpent-creatures and generators and death-beam tubes it had held. To

our left, another score of ships were leaping toward the left-hand fort

in the same manner, and as they crashed into it, racing on through a

storm of death-beams that swept through them, the left-hand space-fort

too had buckled and crumpled and collapsed. At the same moment the

last of the thousand serpent-ships before us was falling beneath our

force-shafts, and then the great opening lay clear before us, with

neither serpent-ships nor space-forts now in sight. We had forced the

gates of the serpent-universe!

Then, our vast fleet massing together once more, we swept in through

the opening, in a long column, into the dying universe. A full two

thousand of our hundred thousand ships we had lost in that mad attack

on the great gates, but heeded that but little as we flashed now into

the serpent-creatures' universe. Through the dead and dying suns

we sped, holding to a close-massed formation and moving slowly and

cautiously forward. At every moment I expected the great serpent-fleet

to burst out upon us from behind some dead or dying sun, for I

knew that their allowing us to advance through their universe thus

unhindered meant only that they had prepared some ambush for us. Yet as

we sped in toward the center of the dying universe, there appeared no

single enemy craft about us or on our space-charts, a total absence of

all serpent-ships that began to affect our nerves as we drove ever more

tensely forward.

At last there appeared far ahead the majestic trio of giant, crimson

suns that swung at this universe's heart, and as we moved down toward

these we knew that at last the final struggle was at hand, since

between those suns turned the great world that was the heart of the

serpent-civilization. Down toward that world we slanted smoothly,

expecting every moment the uprush from it of the great serpent-fleet;

yet still were we unchallenged and unattacked as we moved downward.

Upon us there leapt no serpent-ships; in space about us, as we sank

lower and lower, were no craft other than our own. In breathless

silence we watched, sinking down toward the great sphere's surface,

until at last we hung at a bare thousand feet above that surface, the

mighty city of blue force stretching from horizon to horizon beneath

us. And at sight of that city there burst from us wild, stunned cries.

For the mighty city was--empty! Empty, lifeless, its streets deserted

and bare, its vast mass of towering structures of blue vibrations

without occupant of any kind! No single serpent-shape moved in all that

tremendous city, and I saw that upon the great clearing where the vast

serpent-fleet and the colossal death-beam cone had rested there was now

nothing. The world beneath us, the universe about us, were a world,

universe--deserted!

[Illustration: "Its vast mass of towering structures of blue vibrations

was without occupants of any kind."]

"Too late!" Jhul Din's cry came to my ears like the voice of doom. "The

defense of the gate was only to delay us, and the serpent-races have

gone--they've struck! They've massed all their hordes in their great

fleet and with their giant death-beam cone have sailed out across the

void to attack our universe! We're too late!"

Too late! The thought beat upon my brain like drum-beats of horror as

we stood there, in utter silence. All had been in vain--our tremendous

journey, our fierce struggles, the loss of Korus Kan--since already

far across the void the serpent-hordes in their countless ships were

rushing toward our universe, where their vanguard had prepared a

foothold for them. They had known that we were summoning help from the

Andromeda universe, had swiftly gathered and sailed on their great

attack, leaving only a force at the great gate to delay us. Too late!

Then suddenly resolution flamed again inside me, and I pressed swiftly

the keys before me, sent our whole fleet turning and speeding outward

again--out through the dying universe away from the great trio of suns

at its center--out toward the great opening in the vibration-wall.

"Too late--_no_!" I shouted. "We'll follow them across the void toward

our own universe! They could not have completed that great death-beam

cone yet--they've taken it with them to our own universe to complete

it there--and if we can reach them and attack them before they have

time to complete it, we yet may save our universe!"

Now our great fleet was rushing toward and through the opening in the

vibration-wall, out into the void of outer space once more. There

we halted, massed again in our pyramidal flight-formation, and then

were turning slowly toward the left, toward the far little patch of

glowing light that was our universe. Then we were moving toward it,

with swiftly gathering speed, faster and faster, until at our utmost

velocity we were racing through the infinite immensities of space

toward it; flashing on toward the last act of the vast, cosmic drama

that was rising now to its climax; rushing on through the void toward

the final great battle in which the destinies of three mighty universes

and all their suns and worlds and peoples were to be decided for all

time!

_14. Back to the Galaxy_

Standing once more in the pilot room, with Jhul Din at the controls

beside me, I stared out through the room's fore-windows, straining

my vision out through the cosmic darkness that lay about our

onward-rushing ships. Far ahead, in that darkness, lay a great, glowing

mass of light, lay a radiant, disk-like mass that was resolving itself

into a great swarm of brilliant stars as we rushed ever on toward it.

In silence we two gazed toward it, for it was our own great galaxy that

lay before us, toward which for day upon dragging day, hour upon slow

hour, our mighty fleet had rushed on and on.

Now, as we gazed toward it, waxing there in splendor before us in the

lightless heavens, I could not but reflect upon how infinitely strange

and far a journey had been ours since we had left it, across what

infinities of trackless space and upon what alien suns and worlds we

had gone. Out into the infinite we had gone for the help that might

save our universe, and now out of the infinite we were coming with

that help, but two returning where three had gone out. Yet would the

help we brought be in time to save our galaxy? Already the great

serpent-hordes, we knew, would have reached that galaxy, would have

settled upon the suns and worlds of the great Cancer cluster where

their vanguard had made for them a base, and there they would be

laboring to complete the colossal death-beam cone with which they

could wipe out all the life on all the galaxy's worlds, and all our own

great fleet. Could we reach them and conquer them before they completed

that great cone of death?

We were within a few score hours of the galaxy ahead, I knew, and as

we raced on toward it at the same unvarying velocity, its individual

greater stars were burning out more clearly, and the great Cancer

cluster was a tiny ball of light at the glowing swarm's edge. Countless

billions of miles of space lay between us and that cluster still, I

knew, yet it was with something of hope that I watched it as we flashed

on. For though inside it the gigantic death-cone might be approaching

completion, it would not be long before our vast fleet would be pouring

down upon that cluster and upon the serpent-hordes within it, before

the great cone could be finished.

As I mused thus, though, there came a low exclamation from Jhul Din,

and I turned to find him peering forward into the void with a gaze

suddenly tense. Then he had turned toward me and was pointing ahead and

to the left into the darkness before us.

"One of the great heat-regions!" he exclaimed.

I gazed out toward it and in a moment I, too, had seen it--a dim, faint

little glow of red light, flickering there in the darkness of space

before us and to the left. Steadily that little glow was broadening,

deepening, though, while our temperature-dials were recording swiftly

rising heat outside as we neared it. There was no need to change the

course of our fleet, though, since the heat-region lay toward the

left and our present course would take us safely past its right edge.

It was, perhaps, the same region into which we had blundered on our

outward flight, and with interest we watched it as our great fleet

shot forward and along its outer edge. It was a vast area of glowing

crimson light to our left, now. A terrific furnace of heat-vibrations

loosed by the collision of the great ether-currents through which we

were plunging. Then, just as our fleet was speeding directly past the

mighty, glowing region, along its outer edge, our prow turned slowly

toward the left, toward the heat-region, and then we were racing

straight inward toward the region's fiery heart!

For an instant I stared in stunned amazement as our ship shifted thus,

then whirled around to the Spican. "Jhul Din!" I exclaimed. "The

controls! The ship's heading into the heat-region!"

But already he was twisting frantically at the controls, and now he

looked up wildly toward me. "The ship doesn't answer the controls!"

he cried. "It's heading straight inward--and the ships behind us--!"

And he pointed up toward the space-chart, where I saw now that as they

rushed on, the thousands of ships behind us were shifting their course

like our own and racing into the heat-region after us--racing in like

us toward a fiery death! Then, as I gazed stupefied up toward the

space-chart, I saw something else, saw that inches to the left of our

fleet on the chart, away on the other side of the glowing heat-region

from us, there hung a half-thousand ships, that showed on the chart as

a close-massed swarm of dots, hanging there motionless. And as I saw

them I understood, and with understanding a great shout broke from me.

"Attraction-ships!" I cried. "It's an ambush the serpent-fleet left for

us if we followed them! Attraction-ships hanging there on the other

side of the heat-region and pulling our ships toward themselves, and

toward and into that region!"

With that cry I leapt forward, pressing swiftly a half-dozen of the

keys before me, flashing an order for all ships behind to turn at

right-angles immediately. Watching the chart, though, I saw that nearly

all our mighty fleet was now moving into the heat-region, caught

in the grip of the attraction-ships beyond it. As my order flashed,

though, the last ships of our fleet, not more than a thousand in

number, had turned immediately, just before they too had raced into the

deadly grip, and were rushing clear. Then, as their occupants, too,

saw upon the space-charts the attraction-ships hovering beyond the

heat-region, I saw them race away and around the great glowing region's

edge toward those attraction-ships, while the rest of all our mighty

fleet was drawn farther and farther in toward its fiery heart.

All about us now was the faint red glow of the heat-region's outer

portions, while swiftly the heat inside our ship was increasing, the

air in the pilot room being already almost too warm to breathe. Onward

we were being pulled, irresistibly, our walls beginning already to warp

and crack beneath the terrific temperatures outside. Gazing forward

through the glare of the great region's fiery heart, even as we were

swept in toward it, I could make out through our distance-windows a

swarm of great, disk-shaped craft hanging beyond the heat-region, the

attraction-ships that were pulling us on to doom. Around the great

region's edge toward those disk-craft our own thousand escaped ships

were flashing, but before ever they could reach them, it seemed, we

must perish, so awful had the heat about us become.

Then I saw our thousand ships, racing about the great region's edge,

pouring down on the five hundred attraction-ships, rushing down upon

them in a mad swooping charge. About ourselves the crimson glare had

become all but blinding, and our walls were glowing dull red, the air

about us stifling. Already Jhul Din was swaying at the controls beneath

that overpowering heat, and as our walls wrenched and cracked again I

knew that a moment more of the terrific heat into which we were being

pulled would mean the end. But even with that realization I shouted

with sudden hope, since through our tele-magnifier I had glimpsed one

after another of the attraction-ships, far on the other side of the

heat-region, reeling and crumpling beneath the force-shafts of our

thousand attacking ships!

With every one of those attraction-ships destroyed, the pull that was

drawing us into the fiery maelstrom of light and heat was lessening

in strength, drawing us ever more slowly forward. But forward still

we were moving, pulled by the remaining attraction-ships that fought

still desperately against the thousand attacking craft, fighting to

the end in their great effort to destroy all our fleet. Into the

very inmost flaming heart of the great region we were plunging, now,

the whole universe about us seeming but a single thunderous inferno

of blood-like light and burning heat. Then, as choking and reeling

I felt the ship quiver violently with the approaching end, I saw

our thousand or less attacking ships beyond crashing down upon the

resisting attraction-ships in one irresistible, headlong charge, and

as those great disk-ships, flickering with attractive force, crumpled

and vanished beneath that last wild swoop, the pull upon us suddenly

relaxed, vanished also. The next moment we had shot the controls

sharply over, and our ship and all the ships behind it were shooting

out of that hell of heat and light into empty space once more.

Now, as we sped out into the clean cold void of space again, our ships

again taking up their formation and heading toward the galaxy, I turned

to Jhul Din.

"It's their last attempt to stop us!" I cried. "But we've won

clear--nothing can keep us from reaching them now!"

And as our great fleet again shot forward at full speed through the

void I stood now no longer tense or anxious but with the old lust

for battle burning up in me stood grimly silent with eyes upon the

universe ahead as its glowing mass of stars broadened across the

heavens before us. For now, I knew, we had plunged through the last

trap, the last delay, by which the serpent-creatures had planned to

hold back and destroy us, and now nothing could prevent the final

attack toward which we were racing. Our great flight outward from our

galaxy for help, our terrible captivity in the dying universe, our mad

flight to the Andromeda universe, and our struggle there in which one

of us had gone to his end, our sailing for the dying universe with

the great Andromedan fleet--all these things were drawing now toward

their climax, when we were to pour down on the Cancer cluster and the

serpent-creatures there in our great attack.

Humming, throbbing, droning, on through the void our great fleet shot,

force-shaft cylinders and other mechanisms clanging now beneath us as

our Andromedan crew cleared the decks below for action. With every

hour, every moment, the galaxy's stars were shining in greater splendor

ahead, a giant belt of suns across the firmament before us. My eyes

roved across them, from the yellow splendor of Capella to the white

brilliance of Rigel, and then something of emotion rose in me as they

shifted to Antares, the great crimson star that had been Korus Kan's

home sun. But my eyes hardened again as they turned toward the Cancer

cluster, a great ball of suns glowing in resplendent glory at the

galaxy's edge before us; for well I knew that upon the thronging worlds

of its clustered suns the countless races of the serpent-creatures were

gathered now, completing the gigantic death-beam cone with which they

would sweep out to annihilate all life in our galaxy save themselves.

Straight toward that ball of suns our fleet was leaping, and now Jhul

Din turned toward me.

"You're going to drive with our fleet straight into the cluster

itself?" he asked, and I nodded grimly.

"It's our only chance," I said. "All the serpent-hordes are on the

worlds inside it, and we've got to reach it to destroy that great cone

before they finish it."

Now the galaxy's flaring suns filled the heavens before us as our

mighty armada raced in through the outer void toward them, the Cancer

cluster flaming ahead in all the blinding glory of its gathered suns,

those suns appearing on the upper part of our space-chart as a mass

of glowing little circles, toward which our vast swarm of ship-dots

was speeding. Minutes more of our terrific speed would see us reaching

that cluster, I knew, and I turned toward the bank of keys before me

to shift our great fleet's mass into a formation that would allow us

to pour down into that ball of suns in our great attack. But as I did

so, as I reached toward those keys, there came from Jhul Din a cry that

held me rigid. He was gazing up toward the space-chart, and pointing.

"Look--in the cluster!" he cried. "Those dots--those ships----!"

I looked swiftly up, saw that among the massed sun-circles of the

Cancer cluster, on the chart, were moving a countless number of tiny

dots of black, dots that were sweeping outward from and between those

sun-circles, ships that were rising from the worlds around them!

Out between the cluster's glowing circles they moved, toward us, in

thousands, in tens of thousands, until all hung just outside it, a huge

swarm of dots as large or larger than our own, a full hundred thousand

mighty ships! There in space outside the cluster that vast fleet hung,

and then was moving out toward us, a tremendous swarm of dots that was

creeping down across the space-chart toward our own up-moving swarm,

a mighty armada that was rushing out through the void toward our own

inrushing armada! And as I gazed up at the great chart, stunned, there

came from beside me the Spican's cry again.

"_It's the serpent-creatures' fleet! They've seen us coming--know we

mean to attack the cluster and destroy the cone--and they've massed all

their ships and are coming out to meet us!_"

_15. An Armageddon of Universes_

As Jhul Din's cry rang out I stood for an instant quite still, my

eyes fixed on the chart upon which that great, outrushing swarm was

drawing nearer to our own each moment. It was the vast fleet we had

seen building in the dying universe, I knew, that had carried all

their hordes across the void to our galaxy, to the Cancer cluster,

and that they were flinging out now to meet and halt us here in outer

space while in that cluster they labored to complete their giant cone

of death. Before ever we could attack the cluster, now, we must come

to death-grips with the titanic fleet rushing out toward us, a fleet

that in size and power was at least as great as our own, and for that

instant hope sank within me. Then, as the two fleets rushed ever

closer, my doubts dissolved into a fierce determination.

"They've come out for battle," I cried, "and battle we'll give them! A

battle this time to the end!"

At the same moment I turned swiftly toward the bank of keys before me.

On the space-chart I saw that the serpent-fleet was driving toward

us in a long, rectangular formation, our own fleet racing in its

pyramid-formation to meet it. Both tremendous armadas were moving at

their utmost speeds, toward each other, but as I pressed a key that

slackened the speed of our own fleet I saw the other slowing also.

Then, in swift succession, I touched other keys, and out from the great

mass of our fleet behind me sprang two thousand of our swiftest ships,

driving out from our fleet in a great fringe, ahead of us and to each

side and above and below; and in a few moments more there leapt from

the approaching serpent-armada a similar line of scouts.

Tensely I gazed out into the void as our two fleets neared each other,

the scouts of each driving far ahead and to the sides, while steadily

our own speed was slowing as I touched one after another of the keys

before me. On the space-chart I could see the foremost scout-ships of

each fleet almost meeting, now, but even in that moment of suspense

the strangeness of my position and of all about me struck home to

me--the tremendous gloom of space about us, the blazing suns of our

galaxy stretched across the firmament ahead, the Cancer cluster a

brilliant ball of close-massed suns among them, the two tremendous

fleets that were rushing through the void toward each other. With

every moment the speed of the oncoming serpent-fleet was slackening,

though, and smoothly that of our own was lessening as my fingers moved

upon the bank of keys before me that held the control of all our

hundred thousand ships. Surely never in any struggle in all time had

any commander directed thus, with swift-changing finger-touches, such

a colossal force as moved now behind my flag-ship, responding swiftly

to every touch upon the keys before me. As I stood alone there in the

little pilot room, save for Jhul Din at the controls, the tremendous

responsibility that was mine seemed weighing down upon me tangibly,

crushing me, but I gripped myself, peered tensely ahead.

Smoothly still our great fleet shot through the void of darkness,

and then upon the space-chart I saw our most advanced scout-ships

creeping toward the advancing serpent-scouts and meeting them, touching

them. At the same moment, in the darkness far ahead, there glowed out

here and there long, pale shafts of misty white light, appearing and

disappearing, hardly to be seen against the flaring suns of the galaxy

beyond. All along a broad, thin line ahead those little beams of pale

light were showing, like ghostly, questing fingers of death, and as

they glowed and vanished there far ahead, soundlessly, the big Spican

beside me twitched with eagerness.

"The scouts!" he exclaimed. "They've met--they're fighting!"

I nodded, without speaking, straining my gaze into the void ahead,

where our scouting-ships and those of the serpent-fleet were, I knew,

already whirling and stabbing at each other, while in toward them were

moving the main masses of the two vast armadas. Hardly more than an

inch's gap lay between those two fleets on the space-chart, now, and as

I gazed ahead I saw the fighting scout-ships coming into view before

us, a long, thin line of battle extending across the void before us

and made up of gleaming oval serpent-craft and flat Andromedan ships,

dipping and striking and soaring there before us. Fiercely those

advance-ships of the two mighty fleets were grappling there, scores of

them reeling aimlessly away as the pale beams swept them or crumpling

suddenly up as the invisible but deadly force-shafts struck them. But

I was looking beyond them, now, looking beyond them to where, between

them and the galaxy's suns, a gigantic, far-flung swarm of shining

light-points was rushing toward us.

"The serpent-fleet!" I whispered.

On it was coming toward us, even as we moved toward it, the long line

of struggling, raging scout-ships between our advancing fleets.

Swiftly it was changing from a swarm of innumerable light-points to a

swarm of vaguely glimpsed shapes that grew larger, clearer, with every

moment that they neared us, thousands upon tens of thousands of great

oval ships, flashing toward us in a mighty rectangle! Toward it our

own vast pyramid of ships was rushing in turn, and then the struggling

scouts ahead had flashed back to rejoin their respective fleets, and

with only empty space between them now the two titanic armadas were

thundering toward each other! The Armageddon of our universes had begun!

* * * * *

Swiftly, as our vast fleet leapt forward through the void, my fingers

were pressing the keys before me, and instantly our massed thousands of

ships had shifted from their pyramidal formation into one of two long

and mighty columns, racing forward side by side. Nearer the colossal

rectangle of the serpent-fleet was rushing toward us--nearer with each

instant, until it seemed that the two vast armadas must crash into each

other and destroy each other. Bending tensely over my keys I saw their

huge fleet looming before us, an enormous, close-massed swarm of great

oval hulls rushing lightning-like toward us. Then, just before they

reached us, I pressed a single key.

Instantly our two great racing columns of ships divided, one to the

right, our own ship at its head, and one to the left, splitting from

each other and flashing past the great mass of the serpent-fleet on

each side! And as we thus flashed past there leapt from the cylinders

of our ships toward the serpent-fleet between our columns countless

deadly shafts of invisible force, shafts that in the instant that we

flashed past had crumpled and smashed to twisted wrecks of metal a

full three thousand or more of the great mass of the serpent-ships!

From their fleet's edge the pale beams sprang out in answer to us,

wiping the life from scores of our racing ships; but caught as they

thus were between our flashing columns they could not loose those beams

effectively, and in a moment we were past them. Then with the galaxy's

suns before us our great fleet was halting, turning, its columns

closing again together, while toward those distant suns were drifting

all about us the crumpled wrecks of the serpent-ships that had fallen

before us.

"First blood!" cried Jhul Din, and I nodded without speaking, bending

again over my keys as our fleet raced forward again toward the enemy.

The serpent-fleet, too, had turned, and was moving cautiously back

toward us, and I knew that not again could we execute upon them the

maneuver which we had just used. As we rushed again upon them, though,

their fleet racing again to meet us, my fingers pressed swiftly again

on the keys and our long columns of ships shifted swiftly into another

formation, a long wedge with our own flag-ship at its point. Just

before we again raced into the serpent-ships our fleet assumed this

formation, for it was my plan this time to tear by main force through

the serpent-fleet, shattering it before us. But in the instant before

we could do so, before our mighty wedge's point could crash into them,

their own fleet had divided suddenly, some fifteen hundred ships from

its center driving upward and far above us while the remaining gigantic

mass drove down under and beneath us. And in the next moment I saw that

five hundred of the fifteen hundred ships above were great disk-ships,

and that they were glowing with sudden, flickering radiance!

"Attraction-ships!" Jhul Din was shouting, but already our own ships

and all those behind us were turning upward, pulled resistlessly up,

while from beneath with death-beams whirling thick the mass of the

great serpent-fleet was leaping up toward us.

With the first sight of the attraction-ships, though--a sight which I

had been expecting--I had pressed quickly on two of the keys before me,

and at once the great line of scout-ships that had hung high above us

and on each side during all the battle so far, awaiting this emergency,

were gathering swiftly high above and then leaping toward the

attraction-ships! Out toward them sprang the thousand serpent-craft

that had risen with the attraction-ships to guard them, and then as

they met our charging scouts there was a fierce, wild struggle high

above us, a struggle that was a tiny replica of the gigantic combat

that was going on below. For now, as we were pulled helplessly upward,

the thousands upon tens of thousands of serpent-ships beneath were

rushing up to attack us, undeterred by the crumpling shafts of force

that shot down to meet them, charging up with death-beams sweeping

through us in great shafts of ghostly light!

Swiftly, I saw, the crews of scores of ships about us were being

annihilated by the whirling beams, that wiped all life from those

ships, though still they drove unguided upward, pulled by the

relentless grip of the attraction-ships high above. Down toward those

glowing disk-ships were racing our gathered scouts but ever as they

charged down the serpent-ships that guarded the attraction-craft leapt

to meet them, fighting with blind courage to hold them back long enough

to encompass the destruction of our main fleet below. Not for much

longer could we continue in that deadly grip if we were to escape, I

knew, since through ever more of our ships were sweeping the deadly

beams from beneath!

Then I saw one of the scout-ships high above charge down through the

opposing serpent-craft in a terrific, headlong plunge, saw it smash

squarely down onto one of the hovering disk-ships, and then both had

buckled and collapsed, were drifting away toward the galaxy in twisted

wrecks of metal. And down in the same way were plunging others of the

scout-ships, a deliberate and awful self-sacrifice of their Andromedan

crews; diving down with all their terrific speed and tearing through

the guarding serpent-ships to crash into and destroy the glowing

attraction-ships that had gripped our main fleet. A moment more and

the last of the attraction-ships and the last of the serpent-ships also

had vanished above us, our scout-ships perishing almost to the last

one, too. But they had saved us for the moment, since now, released

from that deadly grip above, our fleet was massing and swooping down in

turn upon the main body of the serpent-fleet beneath us, whose beams

had been slicing through us!

Down--down--black gloom of space and blazing suns and whirling ships,

all spun about me as our fleet rushed giddily down through the void

toward the massed serpent-fleet beneath; then we were upon them, were

shifting into a long, slender line of ships as my fingers on the keys

flashed another signal, were driving in that line past them, raking

them with all the force-shafts of our cylinders. But as we did so

their own great mass of ships shifted swiftly into a similar long,

slender column, and then they were racing through space beside us, two

tremendously long lines of thousands upon thousands of ships, rushing

through the void toward the galaxy, with pale death-beams and invisible

force-shafts clashing and crossing from line to line as they flashed on!

* * * * *

For the moment, as the two fleets rushed thus side by side toward the

galaxy's suns, so narrow was the gap between their flashing two lines

that it seemed they must needs annihilate each other with their mighty

weapons. Plainly visible in space beside us raced the line of the

serpent-fleet, its beams stabbing thick toward our own ships, and in

that wild moment ships behind and about our own were reeling unguided

away by scores as the pale beams swept through them. Into one another

and into untouched ships about them they crashed, whirling crazily in

all directions; but in the same moments the deadly shafts from our own

cylinders were leaping across the gap between the racing lines also,

and serpent-ships all along their tremendous line were crumpling and

collapsing, the racing ships behind them often crashing into those

twisted wrecks before they could swerve aside from them. On--on--in

a tremendous running fight the vast fleets leapt, a fight that was

annihilating the ships of both fleets by scores and hundreds with each

moment, but which neither of us would turn away from, hanging to each

other and stabbing furiously with our beams and shafts toward each

other as we raced madly on!

On--on--far ahead the galaxy's suns were flaming out in greater

splendor each moment as at all our terrific utmost velocity our ships

and the enemy ships beside us reeled on. Blazing, glorious, those

suns filled the heavens before us, now. We had reeled sidewise in our

first mad struggle and now the Cancer cluster lay to our left ahead, a

stupendous ball of swarming stars at the galaxy's edge, while directly

before us at that edge burned a great star of brilliant green, a mighty

sun toward which at awful speed our two struggling, tremendous lines of

ships were leaping. All about us still the ghostly beams were sweeping

from the great lines of ships to our left, but swiftly the controls

clicked beneath Jhul Din's grasp as he sent our ship racing forward

on a corkscrew, twisting course, evading with miraculous swiftness

and skill the deadly beams; while at the same time from beneath there

came to our ears over the roaring drone of the generators the slap and

clang of the great cylinders as our Andromedan crew shifted their aim,

sending crumpling, devastating shafts of unseen force across the gap

toward the serpent-ships!

But now ahead the great green sun toward which our long, strung-out

fleets were flashing was growing to dazzling size and splendor as we

neared it, neared the galaxy's edge. Like a giant globe of dazzling

green fire it flamed before us, with all about and behind it the awful

blaze of the galaxy's thundering suns, in toward which at terrific and

unabated speed we were racing. Countless thousands upon thousands of

ships, stretched far out in long lines there in space, we were reeling

on at our utmost velocity of millions of light-speeds, stabbing and

striking and falling in wild battle as we plunged madly on. Toward the

right our two flashing lines of ships shifted, as we neared the giant

green sun ahead, for now it was flaming across the firmament before us

like a titanic wall of blinding emerald flame. Still farther to the

right we veered, and then we had reached that sun and it was flaming in

stupendous glory just to our left as we raced along its side!

"We're racing straight into the galaxy!" cried Jhul Din hoarsely as we

thundered on. "It means death to carry this battle in there--our ships

will crash into the suns and worlds at this terrific speed!"

"The serpent-ships will crash then too!" I screamed back to him, above

the roar of the generators and the hissing of beams and force-shafts

about us. "We'll carry this battle to a finish!"

Now as we sped past the giant green sun to the left, the line of

serpent-ships between our own vast line and that sun, their ships

were all but invisible to us against the blinding glare of that sun.

Swiftly they took advantage of this, their pale beams leaping toward

us with renewed fury, while in that dazzling glare our shafts of force

could only be loosed upon them as we chanced to glimpse or guess their

position. I saw ships in our line all about and behind us reeling away

as the beams raked them, and then set my teeth, pressed a single one of

the keys before me. At once all our great line of ships bore toward the

left, against the line of the serpent-ships!

Toward them we slanted, even as we raced with them past the tremendous

green sun, and then our line was pressing against their own, our ships

colliding with theirs, oval ships and flat craft vanishing in great

wrecks of metal as they crashed into each other, beams and force-shafts

leaping thick from line to line as we bore inward against them.

Involuntarily, though, their line gave beneath the terrific pressure

of our own, veered to the left farther to escape that pressure, toward

the great green sun. Then, as it veered too far, that which I had

hoped for came to pass, for at the terrific speed at which they were

moving that inward swerve took a full two thousand of their ships into

the outward-leaping prominences of that sun. Into those gigantic,

outrushing tongues of green flame they blundered, a tiny swarm of

midges in comparison to them, and in the next instant had vanished,

only a few tiny jets of fire from the prominences' sides marking their

end. Then we were past the great sun, were flashing on and into the

galaxy's thronging suns that lay thick in the heavens all about us.

The moments that followed live in my memory now as a mad time of

insane, racing combat, of our two gigantic fleets, strung out still

in their long lines, flashing inward into the galaxy and between its

thundering suns at an unabated, awful speed, striking and soaring and

falling with wild, unceasing fury as they plunged on. For now a score

or more of great suns were looming close before us as we raced forward,

crimson and white and yellow stars between which we reeled crazily and

blindly as we grappled still in our vast running fight. Full before

us a single one of them, a sun of brilliant white, was looming larger

each instant as we sped toward it, and as we almost reached it the

serpent-ships drove us inward toward it, striving to repeat our own

maneuver, pressed us inward until its heat was terrific even through

our insulated walls, until almost we were within the limits of the

glowing, stupendous corona!

One or two of our inmost ships were already shriveling and perishing as

they drove inward too far and plunged into that corona, but as they did

so I had sent our long line heading outward again with a swift flash

signal, crashing against the serpent-fleet's line with a mighty shock

and forcing them outward as in hundreds their ships and ours perished

by collisions and from the death-beams and force-shafts, as our line

struck theirs. The next instant, though, as we forced them outward,

passing the great white sun, there loomed swiftly before us the mighty,

turning planets of that sun--great, far-swinging worlds through which

our two vast fleets were flashing! Then all about us ships of our own

fleet and of the serpent-fleet were crashing into those planets as we

drove wildly on. One of them loomed swiftly before ourselves, a great

turning world of whose mountains and gleaming seas I had a flashing

glimpse, about which a swarm of little space-ships were thronging, like

pigmies rushing to and fro as about and above them raged the colossal

battle of giants. Then in the instant that I glimpsed it, as that world

loomed lightning-like stupendous in size before us, we had flashed

sidewise as Jhul Din shifted the controls and were past it!

Behind us our ships and the serpent-ships were crashing by hundreds,

by thousands, into those turning planets as our two great fleets raged

between and among them, at many millions of miles a second. Then we

were through and past them, racing crazily on, soaring and stabbing at

each other still, serpent-ships and Andromedan ships reeling away or

crumpling and perishing as death-beams or force-shafts reached them.

On--on--farther in among the galaxy's suns, a stupendous mass of great

stars all about us that watched us like gigantic, flaming eyes as we

reeled and ran and struck at each other's great fleet there between

them. Away to the left one of the galaxy's mighty nebulæ stretched,

a stupendous cloud of glowing gas, while far ahead and to the right

the strange, mysterious flaming beauty of one of the giant comets was

visible, driving itself between the stars but at a speed snail-like in

comparison to ours. And there among them all, fiery suns and whirling

worlds, vast nebulæ, and glowing comets, our two tremendous fleets were

battling on!

On--on--it seemed unthinkable that any beings could live in that

stupendous struggle, as we fought and flashed there past thundering

suns and worlds, twisting, turning, swaying to avoid them. It seemed

that we could but keep up our colossal battle until both fleets were

destroyed there inside the galaxy. With a swiftness not of reason but

of instinct I touched the keys before me, holding our fleet still to

its long column-formation as we fought on, while beside me Jhul Din

uttered low, fierce exclamations as he twisted our ship lightning-like

to that side or this, his battle-hungry soul being glutted now

for once; while, beneath, our gaseous Andromedan crew wielded the

force-cylinders like mad beings, they and those in the thousands of

ships behind me striking with all their force at their serpent-enemies,

reeling here in mighty battle with them in a universe strange to both!

* * * * *

Above a great red sun our fleets were driving now, stabbing and

striking still with all their force at each other's long, strung-out

line of ships; then, as we rocketed out into more open space again,

with other mighty flaming suns all about us, I had a flashing glimpse

of a black point far ahead that stood out against one of those suns, a

point that leapt lightning-like to greater size, to a tremendous dark,

round bulk that was driving toward us even as our struggling line of

ships flashed toward it. Then in the next fleeting instant I saw that

it was a giant dark-star, one of the many that roved the galaxy, a

colossal black and burned-out globe toward which our battling line of

ships was racing and which was itself booming on through space toward

us!

But a single instant did I glimpse that great dead sun before it was

upon us, because of our terrific speed, and was looming gigantically

before us! In that instant, though, I had seen our peril, seen the

annihilation of our fleet that would come in another moment as we

crashed into it, and my fingers had shot down upon the keys with

lightning speed, our whole great line of ships swerving instantly to

the right. As we did so the great line of serpent-ships swerved after

us, shooting in pursuit as we seemed to give way before them, never

glimpsing in their hot pursuit the thundering dark-star ahead. And as

they swerved sidewise after us, just as we reached that dark-star, it

was upon them, was crashing straight through their tremendous line of

ships!

A full fifth of their vast, long line of ships that dead sun crashed

through, as though through so many flies, annihilating in that instant

thousands of their ships! Shattered by that awful blow, their fleet

already depleted like ours by the fury of our great battle so far,

the serpent-ships reeled back from us, while we leapt in turn toward

them. But instead of racing on with us they were slowing, were halting,

were massing together, were turning, gathered now in a compact mass,

and were racing back--back toward the Cancer cluster, back toward the

galaxy's edge!

"They're fleeing!" My cry was a great shout of triumph. "We've beaten

them--they're fleeing before us!"

Jhul Din was shouting hoarsely too, now, as I swiftly pressed on the

keys before me, our long line of ships massing instantly together

in close pursuit-formation and then flashing after the fleeing

serpent-fleet. Not many more ships than that fleet did our own number,

even now, yet before us the thousands of serpent-ships, close-massed

together like ourselves, were racing back toward the galaxy's edge at

their utmost speed, between the suns and past the swinging worlds, on

and on. Nearer and nearer with each moment, though, we were drawing

toward them, swiftly overhauling them, until within moments more they

were visible just ahead of us, fleeing still from before us as steadily

we overtook them. Then, as we flashed there between the flaming,

thundering suns, as we seemed about to overtake them entirely, to blast

them with our crumpling shafts of force, I saw a full hundred of their

ships drop behind the rest of their mass; a hundred great oval ships

different from the rest in that the rear portion of their oval had been

truncated, cut squarely off, presenting toward us on each a round, flat

surface that suddenly shone with brilliant red light!

An abrupt instinct of danger flashed through me in that moment, and my

hands flashed down to the keys, to signal to our great mass of ships

to slow our pursuit. But in the moment that they did so the thing had

happened. For as our close-massed fleet raced on, after those hundred

red-glowing ships ahead that lay between us and the serpent-fleet,

it was as though a gigantic hand had in the next moment grasped the

compact mass of our ships and scattered them in all directions like a

handful of sand, throwing Jhul Din and me to the floor as our ship was

hurled blindly away with terrific force, scattering our compact-massed

fleet in a single instant across all the heavens, for millions upon

millions of miles! And as we were flung thus blindly outward I cried

aloud.

"Those red-glowing serpent-ships!" I cried, "They've generated

colossal ether-currents behind them as they fled on--ether-currents

that have shattered our fleet!"

For I knew, even in that desperate instant, that that was the

explanation. Those red-shining ships had been specially designed to

project a great force into the ether behind them that would cause

gigantic currents to whirl through that ether instantly, and the flight

of the serpent-fleet had been feigned to give them a chance to use

those ships! They had loosed the vast ether-currents behind them as

they fled on before us, currents that had flung the ships of our fleet

to all sides like a handful of toys as we raced into them! And now,

with our ships scattered far across the heavens in all directions,

our fleet shattered and disorganized and incapable of resistance, the

massed thousands of serpent-ships ahead had turned and were racing back

toward us!

Back they came, flashing in a close-massed formation still, gathered

thousands of great ships speeding back upon our own ship and upon the

few hundreds of our ships scattered directly about us. In an instant

more they would reach us, and the death-beams of their mighty fleet

would sweep us out of existence, would wipe out our few ships and

proceed onward, annihilating the far-scattered ships of our great fleet

before they could gather to resist! Motionless we hung there in space,

in that instant, as they raced back toward us, the remnant of their

mighty fleet looming vast before us, and I heard as through a great

stillness the clang of the cylinders beneath as our Andromedans swung

them forward, to die fighting to the last!

"It's the end, Dur Nal!" Jhul Din was shouting, and I turned to him, my

eyes meeting his strangely, steadily, in that instant.

"The end for us--and for our universe," I said, softly. Then in the

next instant the mighty serpent-fleet was looming gigantic above and

ahead of us, was flashing down in one titanic swoop upon us!

But what was that? Midway in that swooping plunge the serpent-fleet

had halted, had recoiled! In a daze we looked up toward it, about us,

behind us--and then we were crying out in our excitement. For there

from above and behind us was racing toward us a new, tremendous fleet

of ships, ships that were not oval like the serpent-ships, or long

and flat like our Andromedan craft, but were long and tapering and

cigar-like, as the ships of the Interstellar Patrol had been! In a vast

armada of tens of thousands they were sweeping out from the center of

our galaxy, toward and over us at a speed equal to our greatest speed,

and then from them narrow rays of dazzling red light were springing

out, striking thick among the massed serpent-ships ahead, annihilating

those they struck in bursts of blinding crimson light! And as I saw

that I cried aloud again.

"They're our own galaxy's ships!" My great cry was like a trumpet-call

of faith and hope in that mad moment. "They're the great fleet of ships

the Council Chief said they'd build--and they're striking out now with

us to save our universe!"

_16. From Outside the Universe!_

The moment that followed was one of action and combat on such a scale

as to stun the senses. Even as the great fleet of our galaxy rushed

forward upon the serpent-fleet that had recoiled before it, the

far-scattered ships of our own great armada had had time to rush in

toward me again, to mass behind me. Then, as my fingers flashed down on

the signal-keys, our own Andromedan fleet and the mighty galaxy-fleet

above us were leaping as one toward the serpent-ships! Before those

ships had time to dodge us we were upon them, the galaxy-fleet flashing

above them and our own beneath them, and as we flashed thus above

and beneath them thousands of deadly force-shafts struck up toward

the serpent-ships from beneath, while from above countless brilliant

crimson rays burned down toward them.

It was a scene unimaginable, that, as the three great fleets crossed

and clashed. Three titanic armadas, each of thousands of close-massed

mighty ships, that whirled and struck and ran there in the space

between the crowding stars, three far-distant universes coming at last

to death-grips within one of those universes. Flashing beneath the

serpent-fleet it seemed that in all the firmament above us was but

a single vast mass of oval ships, and as our invisible force-shafts

stabbed up in swift revenge toward those ships they were crumpling here

and there, collapsing and falling, whirling away toward the nearest of

the thundering suns about us, while other ships among and above them

were flaring wildly in great explosions of crimson light and vanishing

as the annihilating rays of the fleet of the Federated Suns struck down

upon them from above.

Thousands of ships, I think, must have gone into annihilation in that

first wild rush of the three fleets, for ships all about our own were

reeling blindly away as the pale beams that whirled down from above

swept through them. Upward and downward those ghostly beams were

leaping thick, finding their mark in many of the ships of our two

fleets, but it was the serpent-fleet that suffered most in that mad

rush. Caught as they were between the deadly fires of both our fleets,

though only in the moment that we flashed past, their ships had yet

vanished by hundreds, by thousands, as force-shaft and red ray flashed

and stabbed among them. I heard Jhul Din shouting with mad joy as we

shot past them beneath, heard, too, the cries of our few followers

among the Andromedan crew beneath and then we were past them, were

pausing in space, as I pressed the keys of the fleet-control, and were

turning to rush back for another blow.

Above us now the great galaxy-fleet was turning likewise, slanting down

beside us, and then our two fleets were leaping together back toward

the serpent-ships. They had courage, the beings in those ships, for

though now the tables were turned and it was we who outnumbered them,

they had turned, massed still closely together, and were racing forward

to meet us. By this time our mighty battle had reeled sidewise toward

one of the near-by suns, a great double yellow star that flamed to our

left in growing, awful glory as we raced across the firmament toward

it; but no thought did we give it in that wild moment, since ahead the

serpent-fleet, forming suddenly into a long wedge, was racing toward

us. On it came, heading straight toward our two fleets that flashed

to meet it, and then just before it reached those fleets it veered

swiftly sidewise, to pass by the side of our own fleet, raking us with

its beams while our own ships should mask them from the rays of the

galaxy-fleet.

In the instant that they had veered, though, I had seen their maneuver,

had pressed lightning-like on the keys before me. Instantly our own

great fleet shot sharply sidewise also, so far sidewise in that moment

that instead of racing past us the serpent-fleet flashed between us and

the galaxy-fleet. And again, as they ran the gauntlet of the terrible

rays and force-shafts of our two fleets, their ships were crumpling and

vanishing in flares of light, through all their mighty mass. Another

such deadly blow and we would have shattered their fleet, I knew, and

as the serpent-ships shot past us and beyond us, their own death-beams

stabbing out sullenly still, our two great armadas were turning again,

were wheeling and flashing back again for another great blow, while to

our side the twin great golden suns toward which we were swaying were

looming now in dazzling grandeur.

Backward, side by side, our two vast fleets shot once more, and before

us the serpent-ships were whirling again upon us! Surely no such

struggle to the death had any universe ever seen as this one, in which

all of our three great fleets seemed intent only on grappling there

until all were destroyed. On toward us the serpent-ships were flashing,

all things before and about us bathed now in the dazzling glare of the

stupendous yellow suns to our left; then, just as their great fleet had

almost reached our own two fleets, racing forward to meet it, they had

dipped, had dived sharply downward to pass beneath us. But in that same

moment, with the same idea, I had pressed the keys before me and our

own fleet, and the galaxy-fleet with us, had dipped down also, rushing

forward; and then in the next wild instant our two great fleets and

that of the serpent-creatures had collided, had crashed head on there

in space!

I had only a blinding vision of those thousands of mighty ships

rushing toward us, and we toward them, and then it seemed that in

all the universe about us was nothing but colliding mighty shapes of

metal, oval and cigar-like and long and flat, as our two massed fleets

crashed into their own. How our own ship escaped, in the van of our

fleet I can not guess, for space about us in that moment was but a

single awful mass of shattered and shattering vessels. Crashing into

each other head on, transformed in an instant from gleaming, leaping

craft to mere twisted wrecks of metal, went the thousands of ships

about us, perishing in thousands in that colossal shock. Before us

there seemed only a single mass of great oval ships leaping toward us,

serpent-pilots plainly visible for a flashing moment in their white-lit

pilot rooms, and then our craft was twisting and swaying and ducking

like a mad thing as Jhul Din shot it this way and that to avoid the

ships before us.

Then, as the impetus of that mighty rush of the three fleets vanished

with their awful crash together, they were hanging there, each

fleet mixed and mingled now with the others in that wild, crashing

moment, no longer three vast organized fleets but a single colossal

mass of countless ships, struggling together, ship to ship, in one

tremendous field of battle there between the suns. It was as though,

in that moment, space about us had become suddenly peopled thick

with struggling ships, before and ahead, to each side and above and

below, striking at each other with red ray or pale beam of invisible

force-shaft, whirling and crashing into each other with inconceivable

fury.

* * * * *

Out of the mass before us a single serpent-ship was rushing head on

toward us. As Jhul Din swerved our ship sharply up to avoid collision

with it, its death-beam leapt toward us, but again we leapt sidewise

and upward to avoid that beam and it shot past us and instantly wiped

the life from one of the cigar-like galaxy-ships behind us. As it did

so, though, our force-shafts were stabbing from their cylinders as our

Andromedans beneath swiftly turned them, and then the ship ahead had

crumpled and vanished; while across and above us shot other pale beams

from beyond as another serpent-ship leapt to take its place.

Crash!--a mighty shock flung us sidewise as our craft reeled over, and

we glimpsed a serpent-ship that had flashed down on us from above,

grazing past us. Our force-shafts leapt from the cylinders toward it,

missed it, and then as its death-beams whirled toward us in passing

there burned past us from behind a brilliant red ray that touched it

and destroyed it in a great burst of crimson light! Then in the next

instant our cylinders were swinging toward a trio of close-ranked

serpent-ships that were rushing toward us, one behind the other. The

death-beams of the foremost leapt out, seared along the edge of our

ship, but at the same moment that foremost ship had crumpled suddenly

beneath our force-shafts, and before the two behind it could swerve

they had crashed into that twisted wreck of metal and into each other.

Then all three buckled, shattered hulks were drifting sidewise from the

battle.

But now all about us an awful glare was growing, and as we whirled

and struck there I looked up to see that our titanic mass of tens of

thousands of struggling ships, whirling on with all their speed and

striking with all their power at each other, were drifting blindly

toward the two flaming yellow suns that loomed now in dazzling size and

splendor just before us! Yet on, on we were whirling, stabbing, soaring

and vanishing, locked still in the colossal death-grip of universes,

on until all about and before us was nothing but thundering, blinding

walls of flame as we reeled sidewise into those two great suns!

Even as we soared and struck there, our force-shafts stabbing in

crumpling death toward the serpent-ships that leapt toward us, I saw

that far away on each side the vast mass of struggling ships, extending

as far as the eye could reach, was reeling sidewise with us, vanishing

already by scores and by hundreds as they reeled into the out-leaping

fiery prominences of the giant golden suns before us. Yet on and on

we were whirling still, all organization and plan gone now, with the

two thundering suns beside us like vast ramparts of blazing fire

across all the heavens, into which we were moving. Then suddenly those

ramparts were all about us, titanic walls of awful flame that seemed to

enclose the great mass of our thousands of struggling ships, and as we

dipped and struck and ran I saw that our great masses were reeling in

_between_ the two suns!

On we went, our gigantic mass of grappling craft staggering into that

narrow gap between the great suns, with their awful roaring fires all

about us, now. Hundreds after hundreds of ships on the edge of our

struggling mass were vanishing in those fires as they reeled too far

to the side, or were licked up by the mighty, outrushing prominences,

only tiny spurts of flame marking their end. Yet still we whirled and

smote at each other, there, until the walls of stupendous fire about

us had dropped back, until we were reeling out from between the suns,

staggering through them, and were swaying on into the space ahead of

us, raging on between the galaxy's thundering suns in our colossal

battle of giants.

Reeling thus onward in mad combat I saw for an instant that now among

the suns before us there stretched the gigantic, glowing mass of the

great nebula we had glimpsed to the left at the battle's beginning, a

tremendous ocean of flaming gas there in the heavens toward which our

vast field of struggling ships was swaying. I saw, too, that but a

score of thousands of ships were left now of each of the three great

mingled struggling fleets, and then all else left my mind as fiercely

toward us swooped again a pair of the serpent-ships about us, one

beneath and one above with their death-beams stabbing up and down

toward us as they drove upon us!

At the instant they did so our cylinders had shot down crumpling death

upon the uprushing ship beneath, and then, as the one above leapt down

toward us before the shafts could be turned on it, Jhul Din whirled our

craft up in a great leap, the sharp prow of our ship ripping through

the rear end of that ship as though through paper, annihilating all in

that ship as the awful cold of airless space rushed into it. An instant

it hung there, all dead in it that instant, and then, before it could

drive aimlessly away, a shaft of red rays stabbing out of the great

mêlée behind us had touched it and destroyed it.

Now before us, as we reeled on in that terrific battle that seemed

to us to have endured for ages, there was glowing a great mass of

light in the heavens, the stupendous cloud of flaming gas that was

the nebula ahead, glowing there among the galaxy's stars that seemed

but tiny sparks beside it. Straight toward its flaming mass our ships

were whirling, locked still in our awful grapple! For the moment I

turned from it, though, as in the struggling mass beside us three

serpent-ships flashed down upon a single galaxy-ship. Our force-shafts

shot out and crumpled one of them even as it flashed down, while at the

same instant the crimson rays of the attacked ship annihilated another.

In the same moment, though, the death-beams of the third ship had

leapt downward, had swept through the galaxy-ship from stem to stern,

annihilating all life inside it and sending it crashing away into the

mass of struggling craft about it, while the third serpent-ship leapt

toward us. But at that moment, over the throb of our generators and

the hiss of our force-shafts, there came to my ears a dull, tremendous

roaring sound that drowned out all else, while about us at the same

time, about all the ships of our onward-reeling mass, was flooding a

vast sea of flaming gas, a fiery ocean into which we were whirling!

"_The battle's going inside the nebula!_" yelled Jhul Din, over the

thunderous roar of flame about us.

"Hold our ship with the rest!" I shouted thickly back to him. "It's

going to be fought to the end this time!"

Now all about us was a single titanic ocean of glowing gas, as our

thousands of struggling ships reeled into the great nebula's raging

fires. Through those fires we could make out dimly the shapes of

the ships about us, whirling and battling on still in that hell of

flame, the heat-resistant hulls of them all enabling them to withstand

the comparatively low temperature of the nebula's sea of flame. On

and on, striking, whirling, grappling, we raged, force-shafts and

death-beams and crimson rays stabbing through the glowing gases that

flooded between us, carrying death and destruction still from ship to

struggling ship. For still ships were flaring crimson and vanishing,

were staggering aimlessly away as the pale beams swept them, or were

crumpling and collapsing as our force-shafts struck them, all life

inside them annihilated as they collapsed by the inrushing sea of

flame, now.

Our titanic battle had reached its height, its climax, I knew,

and with the fierce, desperate fury born of that realization, our

ships were leaping upon the serpent-craft. It was a battle out of

nightmare, that awful struggle, a battle of the thousands of ships

of three great universes that grappled with each other to the death

there in that hell of thundering flame. Gaseous Andromedans in their

long, flat ships, writhing serpent-creatures with their oval craft,

strange, dissimilar shapes from the races of all the galaxy's suns in

their great, cigar-like hulls--all swayed and smote and stabbed there

together in that stupendous struggle, pale beam and red ray and unseen

shaft of force whirling this way and that through the seas of raging

fire through which we reeled. On and on we whirled, all thought of

everything but the enemy ships before us gone as each of the thousands

of ships struck out with all its powers for its races, its universe!

Swiftly now, rocking and grappling there in the nebula's glowing

ocean, with flame above and below and on each side and all about us,

ships around us were vanishing, crashing into each other blindly

amid the roaring fires, taking deadly toll of each other with their

mighty weapons. But ever more swiftly, assailed on all sides by our

terrific attack, the serpent-ships were decreasing in number, and

though our own craft whirled to death about us also I saw that rapidly

the serpent-ships were being annihilated in scores and hundreds as

with the fury of utter reckless single-mindedness we leapt upon them.

Thousands by thousands their ships were vanishing, and though hardly

a score of thousands of ships remained now of our two mighty fleets

the serpent-ships had been reduced to a fourth of that number by our

terrible attack!

Still upon them we sprang, there in the nebula's fires, our

force-shafts and red rays whirling ceaselessly through the thundering

flames about us toward them, though sullenly still their beams sprang

to meet us. Through that inferno of flame, between and through the

whirling ships about us, our own craft leapt, its cylinders still

stabbing forth crumpling death to the oval ships about us, and then

suddenly, in answer to some signal flashed among them, all those oval

craft, those serpent-ships, had driven swiftly upward from the mighty

battle, into the roaring fires above us. In those fires, while we too

drove up through the flaming ocean in pursuit of them, they gathered

for an instant, massing together, and then were flashing away, through

the nebula's flaming sea and out of it into open space once more,

flashing together back toward the galaxy's edge!

"The Cancer cluster!" Jhul Din was screaming, now. "They're in

flight--they're heading back toward the cluster!"

But already I had pressed swiftly on the keys before me, and about us

our ships were massing again, the galaxy-ships with us now; and then

close-massed together we were racing outward, too, out of the mighty

sea of flame about us, bursting out of the titanic nebula into the

open spaces of the galaxy once more, its thronging suns all about us.

Through those suns, back toward the galaxy's edge in swift flight, the

five thousand remaining serpent-ships were flashing, the only surviving

remnant of their vast fleet, that our two armadas had conquered and

all but destroyed. Back toward the Cancer cluster they were fleeing,

upon whose thronging worlds all the hordes of the serpent-races were

massed, and within which those hordes, we knew, would be laboring still

to complete the great cone that now we could destroy. So on after them

our own fleet leapt, a score of thousands of mighty ships in close

formation thundering after our flying enemy.

Past mighty, flaming suns we were racing, in pursuit, past slow-turning

great worlds that moved about those suns and that we raced between and

past, through the galaxy's giant stars toward its edge, toward the

Cancer cluster. On--on--after the fleeing serpent-craft we raced, until

far before us through the crowding suns there came into view the great

cluster toward which they were heading, a gigantic, globular swarm of

suns there at the galaxy's edge. The serpent-ships had reached it, now,

were dropping swiftly down toward it, and as we too flashed above it

we dropped after them in hot pursuit. Down--down--the great ball of

flaming suns was growing swiftly in size as we neared it, the countless

thronging worlds between those suns, packed now with the serpent-races,

visible beneath--down--down--and then suddenly, in obedience to some

unseen order, the serpent-ships fleeing downward beneath us had halted,

had turned, and then were driving straight back up toward us!

* * * * *

So utterly unlooked for was that swift, fierce attack that before we

could swerve aside our downward-rushing thousands of craft had crashed

straight into the uprushing serpent-ships. Then the moment after

that wild shock in which hundreds, thousands of ships had smashed

head-on together, there was battle again there above that mighty ball

of suns, with the giant splendor of our galaxy to one side and the

infinite vault of outer space to the other, a battle such as in sheer,

concentrated intensity none of us had ever yet experienced. Like

senseless mechanisms, with the mad energy of despair, the serpent-ships

drove toward us, flinging away their lives to hold us longer from the

great cluster beneath and its crowded, serpent-peopled worlds, throwing

themselves upon us with such awful fierceness that, outnumbering them

as we did, our fleet reeled and staggered there beneath their blows.

Our ships were falling by the hundreds each moment, but now we gripped

ourselves, sprang upon the attacking serpent-ships with a fury that

matched their own, summoning all the strength of despair ourselves as

the vast battle hung thus in the balance, ourselves leaping down upon

the serpent-ships with a suicidal recklessness that sent them into

annihilation swiftly beneath us. For a single wild moment, it seemed,

their ships and ours alike had gathered their utmost powers for one

last supreme effort, were throwing themselves upon each other with a

last mad burst of strength, and in that moment death-beam and red ray

and unseen force-shafts flashed thick through space from ship to ship.

Then the serpent-ships were thinning in number before us, fewer and

fewer, as regardless of our losses we pressed our fierce attack, until

at last but a scant score of them remained, a score that in the next

moment were gone also, flaring crimson or crumpling and collapsing. A

battered remnant of what had once been two tremendous fleets, but ten

thousand ships left of all our countless thousands, we hung there in

space above the cluster--alone! The serpent-ships were gone at last!

The serpent-fleet was no more!

"We've won!" My cry of triumph was taken up and repeated, by Jhul Din

beside me, by our followers beneath, by all, I knew, in our ships about

us as we hung there. We had won! Had annihilated to the last one the

countless serpent-ships, there in awful battle, reeling with them out

of the outer void and through the galaxy, through thundering suns and

whirling worlds, past dark-star and comet, through the mighty flames

of the great nebula! Had swept the last of their fleet from space and

now were moving down toward the great cluster beneath, toward the

thronging suns and countless worlds among them, where all the hordes of

the serpent-races were massed, dropping down to destroy the last mighty

mechanism with which they had sought to conquer and annihilate us! We

had----

[Illustration: "'We've won!' My cry of triumph was taken up and

repeated."]

But what was that below? Our downward-rushing ships had paused,

millions of miles still above the great cluster, and we were gazing

down toward it, toward a vast, dark shape that was rising from among

its swarming suns! A colossal dark _cone_, that was coming slowly,

deliberately, up among those suns and at sight of which our cries

had died on our lips, our faces masks of blank horror! _It was the

mighty death-beam cone of the serpent-creatures!_ It was the colossal

generator of death that they had brought with them unfinished from

the dying universe, that their serpent-hordes in the cluster beneath

had labored upon while we had fought our mighty battle, and that now,

while the last of the serpent-ships had held us back a moment longer,

they had completed! Up toward us it was coming, slowly rising among

the mighty cluster's suns, ponderously, deliberately, and we knew that

in a moment more it would be rising out of that cluster, would be

annihilating all life in our ships with a single sweep of its colossal

beams of death, would be sailing deliberately on to wipe all the

life from the galaxy's worlds, and give those worlds forever to the

serpent-hordes massed in the cluster beneath! We had not won, but lost!

There was a silence--a silence of death--in that moment, as the

stupendous cone rose up through the ball of suns beneath. Still,

silent, we hung there--our doom rising up beneath us--a moment in

which there whirled through my brain confused, swift visions--our

awful battle in vain--our universe and the Andromeda universe the

serpent-peoples', our races gone forever--and then suddenly into my

whirling brain there penetrated a choking cry. It was from Jhul Din,

and he was at the window, strangling, staggering, pointing out into

the black void of outer space beside us, out to where a little swarm

of great shapes were rushing headlong toward us out of that void! A

hundred great shapes that were like mighty hemispheres of metal, domed

and flatbottomed and gleaming----

"_It's the sun-swinging ships!_" Jhul Din's great cry stabbed into

my dazed brain like a sword of sound. "_It's Korus Kan and the

sun-swinging ships. They escaped from the attraction-ships that

captured them--have come across the void after us----!_"

The sun-swinging ships! The ships that with Korus Kan in them had

been captured and that we had thought destroyed, but that somehow,

in the void outside the Andromeda universe, had escaped from the

attraction-ships that held them, had sped across the void after us

and were now racing in among us, hanging above the giant cluster of

suns beneath, up through which the great cone of doom was rising! Then

from those hundred domed ships hanging there, there sprang downward

vast, broad rays of dark, purple-glowing force, the force with which

the Andromedans had moved all their suns, vast rays that spread out

fanwise as they shot down and that formed a continuous, unbroken wall

of purple-glowing force about all the great cluster beneath, screening

all in that cluster from the gravitational pull of everything outside,

from the pull of the galaxy that alone counterbalanced the attraction

of the cluster's suns toward each other! And as that counterbalancing

pull was shut off, that alone had held the suns of the giant cluster

in their balanced positions, _those suns began slowly to move--to move

toward each other_!

Slowly at first they moved, and then faster and faster, sweeping

majestically in toward each other, the whole giant cluster of swarming

suns contracting, condensing! Inward they moved, and now sun was

crashing into sun, at the cluster's center, sending up towering bursts

of awful flame as they met in titanic shock! Inward the thronging,

blazing suns swept still, crashing now through all the cluster into

each other, worlds that circled about them vanishing in great bursts

of fire as they plunged into or were caught between the suns that

crashed about them! Almost to the great cluster's top had the giant

death-cone reached, as the suns about and below it hurtled inward

to doom, and then we saw two mighty suns on each side of it that

were rushing inward and toward it, converging upon it, annihilating

themselves and it together in the gigantic shock of their collision!

On and on, sun moving into sun, they went, all the worlds about them

vanishing into their fires, annihilating forever all the serpent-hordes

that had massed upon them, all matter and all life inside that cluster

perishing as its thundering suns crashed gigantically into each other!

On and on, until but a single colossal core of fire remained below us,

formed by all the cluster's crashing suns, and that already, as the

domed ships among us turned off their screening force, was beginning

to expand outward, to swell out into a vast nebula of flaming gas! A

mighty nebula there where the great cluster had been! A giant nebula

that held within its fires all that had been the countless invading

serpent-hordes who had swept upon us from--and who had been annihilated

at the last by others from--outside the universe!

_17. Outward Once Again_

Standing outside the mighty tower of the Council of Suns, with the

light of great Canopus brilliant on all about us, Jhul Din, Korus Kan

and I watched, days later, as our Andromedan allies bade us farewell.

Behind us were grouped the massed thousands of the Council, with its

Chief, Serk Haj, beside us, while in close-ranked rows on the ground

before us rested the five thousand Andromedan ships that were all that

remained of the mighty fleet of a hundred thousand that had come across

the void to our universe. From those ships the dozen of the Andromedan

leaders were coming toward us, while in them their crews awaited the

start.

In the intervening days those crews, those thousands of gaseous

Andromedans, had been the recipients of the galaxy's frantic gratitude

at having lifted from it the shadow of doom that had hung upon it, in

all that time when the serpent-creatures, in the Cancer cluster, had

prepared to spread out in their great conquest. Sun had vied with sun,

and world with world, to do the Andromedans honor, for they it was,

as all in the galaxy knew, who had gathered the mighty fleet that had

rushed across the void to our universe's aid. They it was who, with the

galaxy's fleet, had smashed the serpent-armada in such a battle as had

never been known before. And they it was, too, whose great sun-swinging

ships had saved us at the last, had annihilated all the serpent-hordes

and their cone of doom.

And if the galaxy had given to the Andromedans for their aid its

highest honors, it had given no less to us and our followers who had

dared cross the void to seek that aid; to me, who had led that wild

expedition across the gulf and had led the great Andromedan fleet

back to our galaxy and into the colossal battle of universes; to Jhul

Din, who had saved us all, and with us the galaxy's chance of life,

in the serpent-universe; and to Korus Kan, who when captured with the

sun-swinging craft by the attraction-ships had managed to escape them

in the void far out from the Andromeda universe by replacing in an

upward position some of the purple-force projectors of the sun-swinging

ships, blasting the disk-ships that held them with the force of those

projectors and racing back to find our great fleet gone, speeding

across the void after us and flashing in to save us at the last moment.

So great was the gratitude of our galaxy for what we had done that no

reward had been offered, either to us or to the Andromedans. For what

save our universe itself could reward those who had saved that universe?

Now, as the dozen Andromedan leaders came toward us there, the great

Council behind us and the vast throngs about us silent, they paused.

Strange, erect columns of misty green vapor, they poised there,

contemplating us, I knew. Then Serk Haj had reached an arm toward them,

bat-winged being of Deneb with his grasp returned by the misty arms of

the gaseous beings before us, and then they had passed from him to Jhul

Din, and from the big crustacean to Korus Kan, and from his gleaming

metal figure to me. There was a strange tightness across my throat as

I reached a hand out toward them, and they paused as they grasped it,

paused as for the third and for the last time I gripped hands with

these gaseous beings of an alien universe, whose great fleet I had led

through the void from battle to mighty battle. Then they had turned,

were gliding toward their ships.

And now we three turned toward our own long, cigar-like ship that

waited beside us, for we were to pilot them out through our galaxy into

outer space once more. Into our craft we stepped, up into its pilot

room with Korus Kan at the controls once more, and then we were driving

up from the great world beneath, with the five thousand Andromedan

ships behind us, were slanting up and outward--out from that world,

out from great Canopus, until it was dwindling and diminishing behind

us, out through the galaxy's swarming suns and past the great nebula

that had been the Cancer cluster, until we were driving out from the

galaxy's edge into the great void once again.

Our ship and the ships about us slowed, halted. Before us lay the vast

darkness of outer space, infinite in extent. Before us and to the right

in that darkness, far ahead and hardly to be seen, was visible a dim

little flicker of light, the flicker that was the serpent-universe, a

dying universe almost as lifeless as the worlds within it were now. And

to the left and ahead glowed the misty little patch of light that was

the Andromeda universe. Even as our eyes caught it, the ships around us

were moving toward that misty patch, outward into the gulf of space,

passing from about us, their great shapes dwindling swiftly as they

sped out from us, toward their universe. Standing there, shoulder to

shoulder, we three watched them go, until at last they were but tiny

points ahead, were wavering, were vanishing, were gone.

Yet still, though, we stood there unmoving, gazing out after them, with

before us the silence and darkness of the eternal void, and behind us

the galaxy's stars.