I turned from my horror-stricken contemplation of them to Jhul Din and Korus Kan, close behind me. "The pilot room!" I whispered. "We'll make for it—get the ship's controls!"
They nodded silently, and silently we stole past the open door and down the long corridor, toward the door at its end that we knew must lead into the pilot room at the ship's nose. Past other doors we crept, all of them fortunately closed, and as we stole on toward the door at the corridor's end I began to hope that at last our luck had turned. But ironically, even as I hoped, the door at the corridor's end, not a score of feet ahead, slid suddenly aside, and out of it, out of the pilot room beyond it, came one of the writhing serpent-creatures. It stopped short on seeing us, then gave vent to a strange, hissing cry, a high, sibilant call utterly strange to my ears, but at the sound of which the doors all along the corridor behind us slid swiftly open, while through them scores of the serpent-beings writhed out, and upon us!
"The pilot room!" I yelled, above the sudden hissing cries of the serpent-creatures and the shouts of our own crew. "Head for it, Jhul Din!"
Down the corridor we leapt, and out from the pilot room there came to meet us a half-dozen of the serpent-creatures, while one remained inside at the controls still. Then they were rushing toward us, and as they reached us were coiling about us, endeavoring to crush us by encircling us with their bodies and coiling with terrific power about us. As they did so, though, our own metal bars were crashing down among them, sending them to the corridor's floor in masses of crushed flesh as we plunged on toward the pilot room. Now we were through them, had crushed them before us, and were leaping through the door, the single serpent-creature inside wheeling to face us. Before he could spring upon us, though, Jhul Din had lifted him high above his head and then had flung him far down the corridor, where he struck against the wall and fell crushed to the floor. Then Korus Kan was leaping to the controls, swiftly scanning them and then twisting and shifting them, heading the racing ship around in a great curve, away from the Cancer cluster ahead and back in toward the galaxy's center, while Jhul Din and I now sprang back down the corridor to where our crew was struggling fiercely with the hordes of serpent-creatures rushing up from all parts of the ship.
Down that corridor, and down another, through rooms and halls and twisting stairways, down through all the great ship the battle raged, the serpent-creatures leaping and coiling about us with the courage of despair while we strode among them, metal bars smashing down in great strokes, mowing them down before us. Despite their overpowering numbers they were no match for us in such hand-to-hand fighting, and they dared not use ray-tubes, like ourselves, lest they destroy their own ship about them. So we forced them on, ever sending them down in crushed, lifeless masses, as they gradually gave way before us.
I will not tell all that happened in that red time of destruction, but quarter there could be none for these things that had come to attack our universe, that had destroyed our comrade ships in thousands; and so within a half-hour more the last of the serpent-creatures had perished and we were masters of the ship, though but a scant two score of us were left to operate it, so fierce had been the battle.
Our first action was to clear the ship of dead, casting them loose into space through the space-doors; then Jhul Din and I made our way back into the pilot room, where Korus Kan was holding the ship to a course inward into the galaxy. The controls, he had found, were very much like those of our own cruisers, but the great generators, as we found, were much different. Instead of setting up a vibration in the ether to fling the ship forward, as in our own cruisers, they projected a force which caused a shifting of the ether itself about the ship, forming a small, ceaseless ether-current which moved at colossal speed, bearing the ship with it. The speed could thus be raised or lowered at will by controlling the amount of force projected, and as the general nature of the generators was clear enough the remaining engineers of our crew took charge of them while we fled on into the galaxy.
"We'll head straight for Canopus," I said, indicating the great white star at the galaxy's center far ahead. "We'll report at once to the Council of Suns; our capture of this ship may be of use to them."
While I spoke Korus Kan had opened the power-control wider, and now our newly captured prize was racing through the void toward the mighty central white sun at thousands upon thousands of light-speeds, though I knew that even this terrific velocity, all that we dared use inside the galaxy, was but a fraction of what the ship was capable of in outer space. Glancing about the pilot room, I endeavored for a time to penetrate the purpose of some of the things about me, as we flashed on. Above our window, as in our own cruiser, was a great space-chart, functioning similar to ours, I had no doubt, and showing the dot that was our ship flashing on between the sun-circles that lay about us. There was a device for flashing vari-colored signals, also, such as space-ships inside the galaxy use to show their identity on landing. There was, too, a cabinet containing a great mass of rolls of thin, flexible metal, inscribed with strange, precise little characters that I guessed formed the written language of the serpent-people, though they were beyond all comprehension to me. I turned back to the windows about me, gazing forth into the vista of thronging suns and worlds that lay all about us now as we flashed on into the galaxy toward Canopus.
From all the suns about us, our space-chart showed, great masses of interstellar ships were also flashing inward into the galaxy, the first exodus of the galaxy's people from the outer suns and worlds, driven inward by the fear of these mighty invaders from the outer void who had already destroyed the galaxy's fleet, and were preparing now to grasp all our universe. Far behind us I could see the great ball of suns that was the Cancer cluster, glowing in supreme splendor at the galaxy's edge, and I knew that even now, on the worlds of those thronging suns, the great fleet of the invading serpent-creatures would be settling, would be moving to and fro, wiping out the races that thronged those worlds, wrecking and annihilating the civilizations upon them and making of all the suns and worlds of the great cluster a base for their future attacks upon and conquest of the galaxy. Could we, in any way, save ourselves from that conquest? It seemed hopeless, and now, weary as we were with crushing fatigue from the swift succession of events that had crowded upon us in the last few hours, since our discovery of the invading swarm's approach, it was with a dull despair that I watched Canopus enlargening ahead as we flashed on toward it.
On between the galaxy's thronging suns we raced, our vast speed carrying us through them and through the swarming, panic-driven ships about them before they could glimpse us. Onward, inward, we flashed, veering here and there to avoid some star's far-swinging planets, dipping or rising to keep clear of the masses of traffic that were jamming the space-lanes leading inward, racing on at the same unvarying, tremendous velocity while we three in the pilot room, and the remainder of our crew beneath, strove to remain awake and conscious against the utterly crushing oppression of fatigue that pressed down upon us. At last we were flashing past the last of the suns between us and Canopus, and the great white central sun lay full before us, a gigantic globe of blazing, brilliant light. As we leapt toward it I saw Korus Kan gradually decreasing our speed, our ship slackening in its tremendous flight as we slanted down toward the planets of the great sun, and toward the inmost planet that was the center of the galaxy's government.
Down, down—our speed was dropping by hundreds of light-speeds each moment, now, as we sped down through the terrific glare of the vast white sun toward its inmost world. As we shot downward I saw that Jhul Din, now, was lying on the floor beside me, overcome by the fatigue that crowded down upon me also; only Korus Kan, of all of us, holding to the controls untiring and unaffected, the metal body in which his living organs and intelligence were cased being untrammeled by any weariness. Beneath us now lay the great masses of traffic, countless swarms of swirling ships, that had fled in to Canopus from the outer suns at the invaders' attack, and as they glimpsed our great oval craft these swarms broke wildly from before us. They took us for a raiding enemy ship, we knew, but down between them unheedingly we flashed, heading low across the surface of the great planet, still at tremendous speed.
Moments more and there loomed far ahead and beneath the colossal tower of the Council of Suns, toward which we were heading. By then I felt all consciousness and volition beginning to leave me, as an utter drowsy weariness overcame me, and I realized but dimly that Korus Kan was slanting the ship down toward the great tower, until abruptly there came from him a sharp cry. With an effort I raised my gaze and saw that from below, as we sped downward, three long, shining shapes were arrowing up to meet us. They were cruisers of our own Interstellar Patrol, and as they flashed upward there suddenly leapt from them a half-dozen brilliant shafts of the crimson rays of death, stabbing straight toward us!
5. For the Federated Suns!
Half conscious as I was, it seemed to me in that dread instant that the whole scene about us was but a strange, set tableau, racing ships and flashing rays frozen motionless in mid-air. Then another cry from Korus Kan jarred me back to realization.
"The signal!" he cried. "Flash the signal of the Interstellar Patrol before they annihilate us!"
At his cry a flash of realization crossed my darkened brain, and I understood that the Patrol cruisers beneath had recognized our craft as an enemy ship, that Korus Kan himself dared not leave the controls even for an instant to flash from the signal our identity. With a last summons of my waning strength I rose, staggered blindly across the room toward the switch, and then, as from beneath the crimson rays flashed blindingly toward us, grasped the switch and swept it around the dial, flashing from our ship's nose the succession of colored lights that proclaimed us of the Patrol. I felt myself sinking to the floor, then, seemed to see the three uprushing ships swerving by us at the last moment as they glimpsed the signal, and then as Korus Kan sent the ship slanting down and over the ground to land I felt a bumping shock, seemed to sink still deeper into the drowsy darkness, then knew no more.
How long it was that I had lain in that darkness, in a stupor of sleep from the weariness of our hours of rushing action, I could not guess when next I opened my eyes. I was lying upon a thick mat on a low metal couch, in a small room lit by a flood of white sunlight that poured through a tall opening in its side. On a similar couch beside me lay Jhul Din, just waking like myself; and for a moment we stared about in bewilderment. Then the sunlight, the brilliant pure white glare of light that could never be mistaken for the light of any star but Canopus, gave me my clue, and I remembered all—our discovery of the approaching swarm while patrolling the galaxy's outer edge, our flight inward and the great battle, our capture of the enemy ship and our escape. I jumped to my feet, and as I did so Korus Kan came into the room.
"You're awake!" he exclaimed, as his eyes fell on Jhul Din and me, standing. "I thought you would be, by now; the Council of Suns is waiting for us."
"The Council!" I repeated, and he nodded quickly as we strode with him to the door.
"Yes. We've been here for many hours, Dur Nal—you and Jhul Din sleeping—and in those hours the Council has been in almost constant session, deliberating this invasion of our universe."
While he spoke we had been traversing a narrow, gleaming-walled corridor, and now turned at right-angles into another, strode down it and through a mighty, arched doorway, and were in the tremendous amphitheater of the Council Hall, a room familiar to all in the galaxy, the vast circle of its floor covered now by the thousands of seated members. It was toward the central platform that we strode, where Serk Haj, the present Council Chief, a great, black-winged bat-figure from Deneb, stood before the vast assembly, behind him on the platform the score of seated figures who were the heads of the different departments of the galaxy's government. It was toward seats among these that he motioned us, as we reached the platform, and as we took our place in them I glanced about the great hall, interested in spite of the cosmic gravity of the moment. It was with something of a leap in my heart that I saw, among all those dissimilar thousands of strange shapes from the galaxy's farthest stars, the single human figure of the representative of my own little solar system. Then, as Serk Haj went on with the address to the assembly which our entrance had interrupted, I turned my attention to his words.
"And so," he was saying, "it is clear to you how these strange invaders from outer space, these serpent-creatures from outside our universe, have been able to annihilate all but a few ships of our great fleet, to settle upon the worlds of the great Cancer cluster as a base, to set up clear around the edge of our galaxy the watchful patrol of their ships that our scouts report. All this they have done with a fleet of a few thousand ships, have shattered our galaxy's defenses and sent wild panic flaming across that galaxy; yet these few thousand ships, as we have now learned, are but the vanguard of the countless thousands that are soon to follow, to pour down upon us in colossal, irresistible hordes!
"It was through the feat of Dur Nal, here, and his companions, that we have learned this. You have heard how, after the great battle, he and his party were able to do what never before was done in all the annals of interstellar warfare, to board and capture an enemy ship in mid-space and bring it back, intact, to Canopus. That ship has been thoroughly examined by the best of the galaxy's scientists, and in its pilot room was found a collection of metallic sheets or rolls covered with strange characters, the written records of these serpent-invaders. Upon those records for hours our greatest lexicologists have worked, and finally they have been able to decipher them, and have found in them the facts of the history and purposes of these strange invaders from outer space.
"These invaders, as the records show, are inhabitants of one of the distant universes of stars like our own, lying millions of light-years from our own in the depths of infinite outer space. So far are these mighty galaxies like our own that they appear to us but faint patches of light in the blackness of space, yet we recognize them as universes like ours, and have given them names of our own, calling one the Andromeda universe, and another the Triangulum universe, and so on. The universe of these serpent-creatures, though, although one of the nearest to our own, has never been seen or suspected by us because it is invisible from our distance, being not a living universe of flaming stars like our own and the ones we see, but a darkened, dying universe.
"It is a universe in which the thronging stars have followed nature's inexorable laws and have darkened and died, one by one, a great universe passing into death and darkness and decay as our own and all others, some time in the far future, will pass. For eons upon it had dwelt the great masses of the serpent-people, thronging its countless worlds, and as their suns began to fail them, one by one, as their universe swept toward its final darkness and death, they saw that it was necessary for them to migrate to another universe unless they wished to pass also into death. So they constructed great space-ships which were able to travel at millions of light-speeds, by causing an ether-shift about the ship; space-ships in which it would be possible to do what never had another done, to cross the vast gulf between universes. Five thousand of these, when finished, they sent out with serpent-crews and death-beam armament as an advance party which was to locate a universe satisfactory for their races and then attack it, gaining a foothold upon it while the rest of the countless serpent-hordes would build a still mightier fleet of tens of thousands of ships, which would transport all their great hordes to the universe they meant to conquer.
"So the five thousand ships drove out from the dying universe into the void, toward the Andromeda universe, the nearest to their own. Down they poured upon it in swift attack, but up to meet them rose the people of the Andromeda universe, a single race ruling all of it, whose science and power were so great that with mighty weapons they drove back and defeated the five thousand attacking ships, forcing them back into outer space again. It was clear that for the present the Andromeda universe could not be conquered, so they turned at a right angle, and after flashing a message by some means of etheric communication to the masses of their peoples in the dying universe, struck out through the infinite void in a new direction, toward our own universe.
"Across the void they came, toward our universe, and rushed in upon it after the long days of their tremendous flight through space, met and annihilated our own great fleet at the galaxy's edge, and have settled upon the Cancer cluster, gaining the foothold they desired. Soon from their dying universe will come their vast main fleet with all their hordes, and with a mighty weapon which the records mention as now being constructed in the dying universe, a weapon to annihilate all life on our worlds with terrific swiftness. They will come, in all their masses, and when they have annihilated the races of the Federated Suns and hold all our galaxy in their grasp will then sail back with renewed power to pour down upon the Andromeda universe and conquer it also. A cosmic plague of conquest and destruction, creeping through the infinite void from universe to universe!"
Serk Haj was silent a moment, and all in the great room were silent, a silence such as surely none ever experienced before. I was listening tensely, Jhul Din and Korus Kan beside me, but no whisper broke that stillness until the Council Chief's voice went calmly on.
"Doom creeps upon us," he said, "yet there is still one chance to stay that doom. We know that before attacking us the serpent-creatures attacked the Andromeda universe and were repulsed, that they plan to return to that attack after they have conquered us. So if we could send a messenger across the terrific void to the Andromeda universe, to tell its peoples of the serpent-creatures' attack upon us and their intention to invade the Andromeda universe once more, after conquering us, there is a chance that those peoples would come to our aid, with the powerful weapons with which they have already once repulsed the serpent-creatures, and would help us to crush these invaders before all their resistless hordes can pour down on our galaxy. It is a chance—a chance only—but on that chance rests the fate of our universe!
"This chance, a chance to seek the help that may save us, has been given to us by Dur Nal and his companions, in their capture of the enemy ship in mid-space; for this captured ship, with its colossal speed, can do what none of ours can do: it can cross the mighty void that lies between us and the Andromeda universe, and carry an appeal for help to that universe. The captured ship has been thoroughly studied by our scientists, for we plan to build a great fleet of others with mechanisms like it, to help in crushing these invaders whom we can not crush alone. A special crew of picked engineers and fighters, from various of our stars, has been selected for it, and now waits in it for the start of this great flight through the void that they are to make for our galaxy. The command of it, though, can go only to the one who captured it, to Dur Nal, who was first to warn us of the oncoming peril, and to his lieutenants, Jhul Din and Korus Kan!"
With the words we three snapped to our feet, the great assembly rising likewise in their excitement, and now Serk Haj turned to face us.
"Dur Nal," he said, steadily, "it is not for me to exhort you and your friends to do now your best, who have done always your best. If you can break through the enemy's patrol around the galaxy's edge, can cross the mighty void which never yet has any of our galaxy crossed, and can carry to the Andromeda universe our appeal for help, it may be that you will save us all—it may be that you will save the races and civilizations of all the Federated Suns from conquest and annihilation and death. To you three, who have spent your lives in the service of the Federated Suns, I need say no other word."
We saluted, and there was a moment of death-like silence, until I spoke. "We start at once!" I said, simply.
The next moment we three were striding down the broad aisle across the mighty hall, between the thousands of members who, still in the grip of that strange silence, watched us go, the one chance of our universe with us. Out of the great hall we strode, and down the big corridor, out of the great tower into the white glare of Canopus' light, and toward the long, gleaming oval shape of our waiting ship. Inside it our crew awaited us, a full eight score of strange, dissimilar shapes from every quarter of the galaxy, among them the two score who had been of my cruiser's crew and had helped capture this ship. Swiftly I gave to them our first orders, heard the space-doors clanging as we ascended to the pilot room, and then as Korus Kan stepped to the controls heard the mingled throbbing and beating of the great generators beneath.
I gave a brief signal, and Korus Kan gently opened the mighty ship's controls, its nose lifting now as it shot smoothly upward. Past us now from beneath there rushed up two cruisers of the Patrol, speeding up ahead of us and flashing signals that cleared swiftly from before us the masses of swarming traffic above, that swept hastily to either side as our long, grim ship drove up and outward. Up, up—and then we were clear of the last of them, our escorting Patrol cruisers dropping behind us now and turning back as with rapidly mounting speed we shot out from the great planet and upward, mighty Canopus blazing full behind us now, as we flashed out again from it, out with our velocity increasing by leaps and bounds, out toward the Cancer cluster once more, toward the galaxy's edge.
With the passing minutes our generators were throbbing faster and faster, and we were leaping on through the galaxy at a speed that equaled or exceeded that of our flight inward. Suns were flashing by us on either side now, at a rate that was an index to our appalling speed, but still we flashed on with greater and greater speed, racing out between the thronging suns of the galaxy toward its edge, the great ball of suns of the Cancer cluster expanding before us as we raced on in its direction. On—on—until the mighty cluster lay full to our right, until we were flashing past it, the blackness of outer space stretching ahead, and in that far-flung blackness the dim little patch of light that was the Andromeda universe. We were passing the mighty cluster, now, heading straight out into the black abyss, and my heart hammered with excitement as we flashed on. Could we pass the patrol of enemy ships around the galaxy's edge without a challenge, even? Could we—but suddenly there was a low exclamation from Korus Kan, and I turned to see, racing up beside us at our left, a close-massed squadron of five great oval ships!
They had glimpsed us on their space-charts, we knew, and now were flashing beside us through space at a speed the same as our own, drawing nearer toward us while from their white-lit pilot rooms their serpent-pilots inspected us. A moment I held my breath, as they flashed on at our side, peering toward us; then, apparently satisfied that our great oval craft was but one of their own fleet, they began to drop behind, to turn and resume their patrol. I breathed a great sigh, but the next moment caught my breath again, for the foremost of the five ships, as it dropped behind, had paused at our side, had veered a little closer as though still unsatisfied. Closer it came, and closer, until the serpent-creatures in its pilot room were clear to our eyes, as it and the ships behind it raced on with ourselves through space. Then suddenly from that foremost ship a signal of brilliant light flashed to those behind it, and at once all five drove straight toward us!
"They've seen us!" shouted Jhul Din. "They know we're not of their own fleet!"
But as he shouted I had leapt to the order-tube, had cried into it a swift command, and then as the five ships veered in toward us there leapt from our vessel's sides long, swift shafts of crimson light, the deadly red rays with which our captured ship had been equipped at Canopus, narrow brilliant shafts that touched the two foremost of those five racing ships and annihilated them even as they sprang toward us. The other three were leaping on, though, their death-beams reaching like great fingers of ghostly light through the void toward us, and I knew that we could not hope to escape them by flight, since they were as swift as our own craft; so in a moment I made decision, and shouted to Korus Kan to head our ship about.
Around we swept, in one great lightning curve, and then were rushing straight back upon the three racing ships. Into and between them we flashed, death-beams and red rays stabbing thick through the void in the instant that we passed them. I saw one of the great pale beams slice down through the rear end of our ship, heard shouts from beneath as those of our crew in that end were wiped out of existence, and then we were past, were turning swiftly in space and flashing back outward again, and saw that two of the three ships before us were visible only as great crimson flares, the other ship hanging motionless for the moment as though stunned by the destruction of its fellows.
"Four gone!" yelled Jhul Din, as we flashed toward the last of the five ships.
That last ship, though, paused only a moment as we raced toward it, and then suddenly flashed away into the void to the right, vanishing instantly from sight as it raced in flight toward the Cancer cluster. We had destroyed and routed the squadron that had challenged us, had broken through the enemy's great patrol! Korus Kan was opening our power-controls to the utmost, and now the throbbing and beating of the great generators beneath was waxing into a tremendous, thrumming drone, as we shot outward into space, the Cancer cluster falling behind us as we flashed out at a tremendous and still steadily mounting speed.
Out—out—into the vast black vault of sheer outer space that lay stretched before and about us now, the awful velocity of our great craft increasing by tens of thousands, by hundreds of thousands of light-speeds, as we shot out into the untrammeled void. Behind us the mighty, disk-like mass of flaming stars that was our universe was contracting in size each moment, dwindling and diminishing, but before us there glowed out in the vast blackness misty little patches of light, universes of suns inconceivably remote from our own. Strongest among them glowed a single light-patch, full before us, and it was on it that our eyes were fixed as our ship at utmost speed plunged on. It was the Andromeda universe, and we were flashing out into the mighty void of outer space toward it at a full ten million light-speeds, to seek the help which alone could save our universe from doom!
6.Into the Infinite
Standing at the controls, his tireless metal figure erect as he gazed out into the vast blackness of cosmic space that lay before us, Korus Kan turned from that gaze toward me as I stepped inside the pilot room. Silently I stepped over beside him, and silently, as was our wont, we contemplated the great panorama before us. A stupendous vault of sheer utter darkness it stretched about us, darkness broken only by the misty light of the great universes of thronging suns that floated here and there in this vast void through which we were racing. Behind us our own galaxy lay, just another of those dim glows; for hours had passed since we had launched out into outer space from its edge, and in those hours our awful speed had carried us on through the void through thousands of light-years of space.
But though in those hours of flight our own universe had dwindled to a mere mist of light, those other misty patches that were the universes ahead had hardly grown at all in size or intensity of light, making us realize that even the vast expanse of space through which our ship had already flashed was but a fraction of the gulf that lay between us and the great Andromeda universe. Before us the soft glow that was that universe seemed a little brighter, a little larger, but even so I knew that more than a score of days must elapse before even our ship's tremendous velocity would bring us to it. And even were we able to secure the help we needed, it would still be many days before we could flash back to our own galaxy, and in those days, I well knew, the serpent-invaders would be completing their last plans, tightening their grip on all the suns and worlds of the Cancer cluster, and preparing the way for the vast hordes that soon would cross the void to pour down on that cluster, spreading resistlessly from it across all our galaxy.
It was with heavy heart that I gazed ahead, knowing these things, but my gloomy thoughts were suddenly interrupted by an exclamation from Korus Kan, who had been peering intently forward into the tenebrous void, and who now pointed ahead, toward the right.
"That flicker of light," he said: "you see it?"
I bent forward, gazing to where he was pointing in the heavens before us, and then at last made out in the blackness, not far to the right of the glowing Andromeda universe, another patch of light of equal size, but one whose light was so dim as only to be seen with straining eyes. A mere dim flicker of light it was, in that crowding darkness, but as I gazed at it the nature of it suddenly came clearly to my mind, and I uttered a low exclamation myself.
"The universe of the serpent-creatures!" I said. "It's the dying universe from which they came to invade our own!"
He nodded. "Yes. It's nearer the Andromeda universe than our own, too."
I saw that he was right, and that the two universes, that of Andromeda and this dim, dying one, lay comparatively close to each other, and at almost equal distances from our own, the two forming the base of a long, narrow triangle of which our own universe was the apex. Together we gazed toward that dim flicker of light, in a thoughtful silence. We knew, even as we gazed, what great preparations were going on in that dying universe for the conquest of our own galaxy, what mighty efforts the serpent-races there were making, to complete their vast fleet and the strange, huge weapon which the records we had captured had mentioned, so that they could flash through the void to pour down on our galaxy. The knowledge held us wrapped in thought as our great ship raced on, still holding to its tremendous utmost velocity, rocking and swaying a little as it plunged through the vast ether-currents which swirled about us here in outer space.
Gradually, as we two stood in silence with our great craft speeding on, I became aware that during the last few minutes the air inside the pilot room had become perceptibly warmer, and that its warmth was still increasing. I glanced at the dial that registered the output of our heat-generators, but it was steady at its accustomed position; yet with each moment the warmth was increasing, until within a few minutes more the heat about us had become decidedly uncomfortable. Korus Kan, too, had noticed it, and had now swung backward the control of the heat-generators; yet still the warmth increased, the heated air in the pilot room rapidly becoming unbearable. I turned to the Antarian, fully alarmed now, but as I did so the door snapped open and Jhul Din burst up into the pilot room.
"What's happening to the ship?" he cried. "Its inner walls are getting almost too hot to touch!"
In stunned surprize we gazed at each other, our heating-mechanisms turned completely off now, yet the inside-temperature dial's arrow was still moving steadily forward! The thing was beyond all reason, we knew, and for an instant we stood in amazement, the heat increasing still about us. Then suddenly Jhul Din pointed upward toward the massed dials above the controls, his arm quivering.
"Look!" he cried. "The outside-temperature dial!"
Swiftly we raised our own eyes toward it, the dial upon which was shown the temperature outside the ship. It should have shown absolute zero, we knew, as always in the infinite cold of empty space. But now it did not, and our eyes widened as we stared at it, in utter astonishment and fear.For it registered a temperature of thousands of degrees in the empty void about us!
"Heat!" I cried. "Heat in empty outer space! It's unthinkable!"
Unthinkable it was; yet, even as we stood and stared, the arrow on the outside-temperature was still creeping steadily forward, showing a swiftly increasing heat outside, while the air inside had become all but unbreathable, parching to the lungs. At the same moment a faint light began to appear about us, a dim-red glow that was intensifying with each moment that we raced onward, and as we wheeled toward the windows we saw, in the blackness of space before us, a great, faintly glowing region of red light ahead, stretching across the heaven before us. Ever stronger that crimson glow was growing as we raced on, the heat about us mounting with it, and from beneath came the cries of fear of our crew as they too glimpsed the awful region of heat and light through which we now were racing.
I knew that not much longer could the heat about us increase thus if our ship and ourselves were to survive, yet steadily the arrows on the temperature-dials were moving forward, and as more and more of the awful heat outside penetrated through the insulation of our heat-resistant walls I felt my brain turning dizzily, saw big Jhul Din stagger and sway against the wall, and saw Korus Kan, the heat penetrating through his metal body even more than through our own, slumping sidewise across the controls as he was overcome by it, only half conscious. I sprang to his side, despite my own dizziness and parching throat and lungs, grasped the controls and held our ship straight onward, since all about us the vast glow of crimson light and heat stretched, encircling us and beating upon us as we flashed onward. No flame there was, nor incandescent gas, nor solid burning matter of any kind, nothing but a titanic region of brilliant crimson light, without visible source of any kind, glowing with terrific heat there in the emptiness of outer space.
The glow about us was becoming more brilliant with each moment that we raced on, and as the heat outside and inside increased still more I saw Jhul Din fling open the pilot room's door in a vain search for cooler air; heard from beneath a rumbling, ominous thumping and cracking, as our heat-seared walls began to warp in the terrible temperature to which they were being subjected. Far ahead in the awful region of heat and light through which we were speeding I glimpsed now a deeper spot of crimson light in the great red glow, and as we raced on toward it I saw that it was the center of all the great outpouring of red light and of heat, since it was all but blinding in its brilliance, while our dials showed a temperature mounting each moment that we neared it.
"It's the center of the whole thing!" cried Jhul Din, staggering toward me and then slumping down to the floor, overcome. "Keep the ship clear of it!" he shouted, collapsing as he did so, while beside me I saw Korus Kan, completely unconscious, neither the great crustacean Spican nor the metal-bodied Antarian possessing my own resistance to the heat that now was smothering us, though I too knew that not much longer could I hold to the controls.
Hold to them I did, though, but half conscious now myself; then as there flamed dead ahead the heart of the whole great inferno, a blazing area of brilliant crimson light that dazzled me, its terrific heat pouring full down upon our plunging ship, I swung the controls sidewise, swerving our craft to the left and around the great heat-region's fiery heart. Along its side we flashed, our ship plunging and reeling now as it shot through ether-currents that must have been of unparalleled size and speed, but even in that darkness that was stealing over my senses I could see that in that hell of light and heat to our right there was still no core of matter, nothing but light and heat and space. Full beside us it flamed as we shot past it, our rocking ship's sides still grating and cracking terribly beneath the heat that beat upon them, racing past that awful glare of crimson light and heat that was like a colossal forge at which some mighty workman beat out flaming suns, blazing in terrific intensity and dimensions there in the void between universes.
On we raced, while I strove with all my waning strength to hold the ship, bucking and swaying as it was, clear of the fiery inferno to our right, and then it was dropping behind, the brilliant crimson light and terrible heat about us lessening a little as we shot by it. Moments more and it had dwindled to a deeper spot of light in the great red-glowing region to our rear, and then as we flashed still onward at our utmost speed the last of the light and heat about us were passing; so that a moment later, with heat-mechanisms again switched on, we were flashing again through the cold black void as before. With the passing of the overpowering heat the cracking of the ship's sides had ceased, and Korus Kan and Jhul Din were staggering to their feet, consciousness returning with the cooler air. Together we stared back, to where only a swiftly vanishing little glow of faint red light in the darkness behind gave evidence of the hell of heat and light through which we had just come.
"Heat and light in the void of outer space!" I cried. "The thing's impossible—and yet we came through it!"
Korus Kan had been gazing back with us, but now he turned at my exclamation, shook his head. "Not impossible," he said quickly. "That heat and that light we came through were not generated like the usual heat and light of burning suns—they were generated in empty space by the ether itself!" And as we stared blankly at him he quickly explained himself. "You know that heat and light are but vibrations of the ether of various frequencies, just as are radio-active or chemical rays, and the electro-magnetic waves we use for speech and signaling. Highest of all in frequency are those electro-magnetic waves; next in order of frequency come heat waves; next the red light-vibrations, and down the various colors of light to the lower-frequency violet light vibrations; and below these, lowest of all, the radio-active or chemical rays. Well, our scientists have long known that various of these ether-vibrations have been set up in the ether of outside space by the collision of great ether-currents. By those collisions are formed sometimes electro-magnetic vibrations, interfering with our speech-vibrations as static, or sometimes light-vibrations, glowing without visible source in the heavens and known to us as the zodiacal light. Here in the void, though, where mighty currents of size and speed inconceivable must collide, the vibrations set up were in the frequency-range of heat and of the lower adjoining frequency, that of red light; so that that region we came through is one where the immense ether-currents that we plunged through collide and set up a ceaseless outpouring of heat and light waves there in the ether, in empty space itself."
I shook my head. "It seems plausible," I said, "yet the reality of it—that titanic region of awful heat and light——"
"It seems strange enough," he admitted, "but it's really no stranger than if it had been a great region of static, or——"
A sharp cry from the Spican stabbed through our talk. "The walls!" he shouted. "They're beginning to glow—look——!"
Startled, we swung about, and then the blood drove from my heart at the strangeness and awfulness of what we saw; for, engrossed in our talk, we had not noticed that all in the pilot room about us, walls and floor and mechanism and controls, was beginning to shine out with a strange, flickering luminosity, a misty, fluorescent light that with each moment was waxing in intensity, a quivering, unfamiliar light that seemed to glow from all in our ship, as it raced swaying on, though outside was nothing but the same blackness of space as before! Even as we stared about us, astounded, our own bodies, and especially the metal body of Korus Kan, had begun to radiate the same lambent light, and then, with a sudden great leap of my heart, I saw that the edges and corners of the walls about us were smoothing and rounding a little, crumbling and disappearing a little as though slowly disintegrating. At the same moment a strange tingling shook through every atom of my body, a quivering force that flooded through me with increasing intensity.
Horror-stricken we stood, until from one of the levers beside me an inch of the handle fell off, a little piece of metal that rattled to the floor and that was crumbling slowly, disintegrating, even as did the lever from which it had crumbled off. Then Korus Kan was leaping toward me, across the glowing pilot room.
"Swerve the ship's course!" he cried, wildly. "We've run into another great region of vibrations—radio-active vibrations that will crumble the ship and all in it to pieces in a few more moments!"
I grasped the shining levers, swung them sharply sidewise, sent our craft flashing off at a broad angle to its previous course, but still about us the glowing light waxed and deepened, and I felt an infinite nausea overcoming me as through my body surged the floods of radio-active vibrations from the ether about us that had caused all matter in our ship to radiate that misty light. With each moment the shining walls about us seemed crumbling faster, and I knew that moments more would see the ship's end unless soon we escaped from the great trap of disintegrating death into which we had ventured. I felt, too, that not for long could we ourselves stand the impact of these disintegrating vibrations, felt the tingling that shook my own glowing flesh increasing in intensity, while all about us, now, tiny bits of metal were falling from crumbling walls and ceiling and machinery.
Still grasping the controls, though, I held the ship to a course aslant from our previous one, while my two companions tensed with me over them, gazing ahead, while from beneath again came wild cries of alarm as those of our crew, who had already run the gantlet of the enemies' death-beams and of the great heat-region, saw the new peril that encompassed us. There came, too, from somewhere in the ship, a great thump and clang of metal as some one of our mechanisms there broke loose from its crumbling base, but still we flung onward through the void, rocking and twisting, and in a moment the terrible tenseness that gripped us lessened a little as we saw that the glowing of the walls about us, and of our own bodies, was beginning to wane, as we drew out of the zone of deadly force. A few more moments of onward flight and they had vanished altogether, and then I brought the ship back to its course, heading once more toward the misty light-patch of the Andromeda universe, while I drew a long breath of relief.
There was a silence of moments before Jhul Din, first of us, found his voice. "Heat-regions and radio-active force regions!" he exclaimed. "If more of them lie between us and the Andromeda universe, what's our chance of getting there?"
Korus Kan shook his head. "We'll get there," he said, "but we'll have to keep close watch every moment of our flight—there's no way of telling how thickly scattered these great vibration-regions may lie in space about us."
A moment more and Jhul Din left us, passing down into the ship's body to ascertain what damage had been wrought by the great zone of radio-active force, though we knew that we had escaped from it before it could seriously damage the ship. And as I now relinquished the controls to Korus Kan, pausing with him a moment to look out again with some fearfulness into the black void through which we were racing, it was with a full realization, at last, of the tremendous perils and unguessed circumstances that might lie in the vast spaces through which we must yet flash. Yet as my eyes fell again on the misty-glowing circle of the Andromeda universe, and the sinister, dimly flickering mass of the dying universe of the serpent-people, to its right, I felt my determination steeling again within me.
It was the sight of those two far patches of light ahead, I think, that held us all to our purpose in the hours, the days, that followed. Long, strange days they were, when with no sun whatever near us we could measure time only by the great abysses of space through which our ship was steadily flashing, computing from those distances and from our unvarying velocity the passing of the hours. But with each day, with each hour, we were racing countless billions of miles nearer toward the Andromeda universe, and toward the goal of our tremendous journey. On and on we plunged, our prow turned ever toward that misty circle of light ahead, that was largening and brightening with each hour that we sped toward it.
Thrice, in those following days, we glimpsed great regions of heat and crimson light like that through which we first had plunged, and each time we were able to swerve away from them and detour around them in time, and so escaped a renewal of our first dread experience of them. More than once, too, our instruments gave us warning of zones of radio-active or electrical force near us, and these we gave even a wider berth than the heat-regions, for these we feared most of all, I think. Ether-currents and vast ether-maelstroms were about us, too, we knew, but the tremendous speed of our craft brought us flashing through those where a slower-moving ship would have perished.
As it was, one danger that had menaced us always in navigation inside the galaxy, the presence of meteors and meteor-swarms, was lacking in our flight. Yet I think that almost we would have welcomed their presence about us, for all their danger, if only for the knowledge that some other matter besides our ship moved and existed in the mighty void around us. It was our ship's isolation, the knowledge that all about it for countless billions upon billions of miles, thousands upon tens of thousands of light-years, there stretched only the awful regions of empty space, an ocean of lightless space in which the galaxies of flaring suns here and there were but tiny islands, that oppressed us most. Far behind lay our own galaxy, and far ahead the Andromeda universe; and between universe and universe, an infinitesimally tiny speck there in the mighty void, our ship raced on and on.
But as we added day after measured day to our flight, as we flashed nearer and nearer toward the Andromeda universe, it slowly began to change before us, to wax from a little patch of glowing light to a larger and brighter patch, and then to a great oval of light that flamed brilliant in the blackness of space before us, and finally to a vast disk-shaped mass of stars like our own universe. The disk mass lay in space with edge toward us, and seen thus, the light of its countless thronging stars was fused almost into a single waxing glow, but as we swept nearer and nearer that glow began to resolve itself into the light of the myriad massed suns of which it was composed. So brightly flamed those gathering suns in the heavens before us that only with an effort could we make out, far toward the right, the still faint glow of the dying universe of the serpent-people, as near to us almost as that of Andromeda, yet infinitely dim and dead in comparison with it.
Steadily we flashed on, day following day, until when a score of them had passed we computed ourselves as having traversed two-thirds of our journey, and could see that ever more swiftly the great universe of stars ahead was widening across the heavens. On that twentieth day I spent hours with Jhul Din in our regular inspection of the ship's mechanism, passing with him through the long room where our engineers, depleted in number by the death-beam that had sliced through our ship, tended carefully the mighty generators. Then the Spican and I passed out of the room, and were proceeding down the long corridor that led toward the pilot room when there came suddenly from it, ahead of us, a sharp cry.
We stopped short a moment, then raced down the corridor and burst up into the pilot room, where Korus Kan turned swiftly from the controls toward us.
"Ships are approaching from ahead!" he cried, pointing up toward the big space-chart.
We looked, and saw that even as he had said there moved upon that chart a half-hundred black dots, in close formation, creeping steadily downward across the blank chart to meet the upward-creeping dot that was our ship. In silent amazement we watched, as our craft raced on, and then saw that as we neared them the fifty ships ahead were slowly halting, and then beginning to move back toward the Andromeda universe in the same direction as ourselves. They were allowing us to slowly overtake them, obviously intending to race beside us at the same speed as ourselves, toward the Andromeda universe. And as they made that move Jhul Din uttered an exclamation.
"They must be ships from the Andromeda universe itself!" he cried. "They've learned of our approach by space-charts of some kind—have come out to meet us!"
My heart leapt at the thought, for if it were so it would mean the first success of our mission across the void. Silently we watched, as our ship's single dot on the chart raced closer and closer toward the half-hundred dots above it, they moving now at a speed almost equal to our own. Within moments we would be able to glimpse them, we knew, and gazed tensely into the blackness of space ahead, toward the Andromeda universe's flaring suns, as our craft raced on. Moments were passing, tense moments of silence and watchfulness, and then far ahead we glimpsed in the void, hardly to be seen against the great glow of the Andromeda universe, a little mass of light-points that steadily were largening as we gradually overtook them.
A full fifty of them in sight, they were flashing on in a close formation, allowing us to overhaul them, changing from mere light-points into dark, vaguely glimpsed shapes as we drove nearer toward them. Then at last we had reached them, were driving in among them as they moved now at the same speed as ourselves, could see their shapes more clearly as long andoval, their front ends white-lit transparent-walled rooms like our own. Nearer we were flashing to those before us and about us, and then in those white-lit control rooms I glimpsed their occupants, slender, writhing pale shapes at sight of which I cried aloud.
"Serpent-ships!" I cried. "Serpent-ships from the dying universe ahead! Those back in our galaxy from whom we escaped have warned them of our coming, by the means of etheric communication their records mentioned—they know our mission and they've come out to intercept us here in space!"
Even as I cried out, Korus Kan's hands flashed out to the controls, but he was an instant too late. For at that same moment the ships just before us had turned and circled in one swift movement, and were rushing straight back toward us. I had a flashing glimpse of their white-lit prows racing toward us through the intense darkness, and saw with photographic clearness the slender serpent-shapes in those brilliantly lit pilot rooms, and then the foremost ship loomed suddenly enormous as it flashed straight toward us. With a sharp cry Korus Kan drove the controls sidewise to swerve our ship, but before we could avoid the onrushing craft ahead it was upon us and with a terrific, thunderous shock had crashed straight into our own racing ship!
7.The Gates of a Universe
I think now that it was only that last jerking aside of the controls by Korus Kan that saved us from utter annihilation in that moment. For as he moved them our ship swerved sidewise, not enough to avoid the collision but enough to cause the onrushing ship to strike our own obliquely along the side instead of head on, and it was that alone that saved us. The crash shook our great craft like a leaf in a gale, trembling and reeling there in the black gulf of space and flinging us all to the pilot room's floor, and for a moment it seemed to us that our ship had been riven apart. Then, as it steadied, we scrambled to our feet, just in time to see the ship that had crashed into us reeling away to the side, a shattered mass of metal, while down upon us from above and all about the other serpent-ships were swooping.
As Korus Kan sprang back to the controls I leapt to the order-tube, was on the point of shouting a command to our crew beneath, when down from the hovering ships above us there dropped around us a dozen or more of great flexible ropes or loops of gleaming metal, that encircled our ship like great snares. Within another instant our craft had been drawn upward by them until it lay securely lashed between two of the enemy ships, our ray-tubes useless now; since to loose them was but to perish with the ships that held us. Then another ship was slanting down above us, and as it hung over us there projected downward from its lower space-door toward our own upper space-door a hollow tube of metal of the same diameter as the two space-doors, that attached itself with a click to our own upper door, forming a hermetically sealed gangway there between our two ships in space.
Until that moment we had stood motionless in amazement, somewhat stunned by the suddenness of our ship's capture; then as the space-door of our ship clanged open above I uttered a cry, sprang out into the corridor that ran the ship's length, and saw the members of our crew bursting into that corridor in answer to my cry, even as from the space-door chamber beside it there writhed out a horde of scores of the serpent-creatures! Jhul Din and Korus Kan were beside me, now, and with shouts of fierce anger we rushed upon the masses of serpent-creatures who still were pouring down from the ship above through the hollow gangway.
The mêlée that followed was wilder than when we ourselves had captured this same ship; since though we and all our crew flung ourselves forward upon the things without hesitation, we were weaponless and outnumbered by ten to one. As it was, I struck out with all my power at the hideous, writhing beings, feeling some of them collapse beneath my wild blows even as they strove to coil about me; saw Korus Kan, with his triple powerful metal arms, crushing the life from those who leapt upon him, cool and silent as ever even in that wild din of battle; glimpsed the great Spican grasping those about him in his tremendous arms and literally tearing them into fragments as we battled on. But rapidly the members of our crew who battled about us were going down, the life crushed from them by the coiling bodies that overwhelmed us, and then as I strode on I too was gripped from beneath, by a serpent-creature that had wound itself about my feet, and now pulled me down.