"We were weaponless and outnumbered ten to one."
"We were weaponless and outnumbered ten to one."
"We were weaponless and outnumbered ten to one."
Struggling in the grip of a half-dozen of the alien creatures, I heard Jhul Din shouting hoarsely, saw him finally pulled from his feet also by a great mass of the writhing things, and then Korus Kan and the remainder of our crew were overcome too, and within another moment all was over. Scores of the serpent-creatures lay dead about us, but with them lay many of our own crew; not more than a bare score were left to us now of all our party. Gripped tightly still by the serpent-creatures, we were thrust down a narrow stair and into an empty little storeroom beneath the pilot room, in its metal walls but a single space-window giving a view forward. The door snapped shut as the last of us were thrust inside, and then our captors had left us, the lashings that had snared our ship were cast loose by the ships on either side, and as the humming of the generators waxed loud again our ship and those about it began to move once more through space.
"They're heading now toward the dying universe!" exclaimed Korus Kan, gazing through the single window into the black gulf outside. "They're going to take us there as prisoners!"
But I too, gazing through the window at his side, had seen that our ship's prow was turning now toward the right, so that ahead now instead of the great glowing mass of the Andromeda universe there lay the dim, faintly glowing patch of light that was the serpent-peoples' waning universe. Toward it now our ship and the ships about us were flashing at greater and greater speed, and as they hummed on the despair that had already gripped me deepened. It was not the peril in which we ourselves lay that affected me, for well I knew that from the moment of our capture our fate had been sealed, and that our temporary reprieve from death meant only that some more horrible fate awaited us in the dying universe. It was that the last chance of our own universe had vanished with our capture, the last hope to summon from the Andromeda universe the help that could save our galaxy gone now forever.
In a silence of utter despair I gazed ahead as our ship and those about it hummed on, while Jhul Din and Korus Kan and all the survivors of our crew prisoned with us maintained the same despairing silence. There was no plan for escape, no suggestion of it, even, for well we knew the impossibility of even winning clear of the room that was our prison, not to speak of overcoming the hordes of serpent-creatures who now operated our ship. In a strange apathy of spirit we sat and stood, hour after hour, speaking little. Our eyes and minds turned only to the window through which we could see, in the black abyss of space ahead, the faintly glowing universe of the serpent-people broadening slowly ahead as our ships raced on at full speed toward it.
A day passed, and that dying universe had grown across a full third of the vault of space before us, a great, dim-glowing region of flickering luminescence utterly different from the radiance of the shining Andromeda universe, that lay now far to our left. On and on the serpent-ships raced, unceasingly, hour upon hour, until at last on the third day of our imprisonment their speed began to slacken, the drone of the great generators falling a little in pitch as they drew near at last to their galaxy, that had expanded outward now until it seemed to fill all the heavens before us, so strange a spectacle to our eyes that almost we forgot our own predicament and despair in contemplation of it.
Full in the heavens before us it lay, a mighty galaxy fully as large as our own, as the Andromeda universe, but infinitely different, a galaxy not of life but of death. In all its mighty mass were no flaming white or blue or yellow suns like those of our own galaxy, no brilliant young stars surrounded by circling, sun-warmed worlds. Here was only a vast forest of dead and dying suns, stretched across the heavens, huge throngs of dark, burned-out stars, cold and black and barren, that crowded thick upon one another, with here and there a few dying suns of dark, smoky red, somber crimson stars in the last stages of stellar evolution. It was with the light of these few alone that the great mass faintly glowed, an expiring universe in which all light and life were sinking into darkness and death.
Silent with awe and wonder we watched as our ships drove in toward this darkening galaxy, and then I began to make out, between us and it, a strange, constant flicker of blue light that seemed to extend all about the faint-glowing universe before us. Stronger that flicker was growing as we sped on toward it, though through it there shone clearly as ever the light of the crimson suns beyond it. At last we seemed racing straight into it, and now I saw that it was a colossal globular shell of flickering blue light, almost invisible, that enclosed within itself all the mighty, circular mass of the dying universe before us. Our ships seemed about to flash straight into it, but now turned sharply to the left, speeding along the great light-barrier's edge. A ship beside us, though, had turned a little too late and had struck the light-wall while turning, and as it did so I saw it rebounding back with terrific force as though in collision with a solid wall, its whole prow crumpled by the impact. Then, at last, I comprehended the nature of this vast shell of flickering blue light that enclosed the dying universe.
"It's a vibration-wall!" I cried to my companions. "A great wall of etheric vibrations enclosing all this universe!"
For I saw now that that was the great barrier's nature. It was a mighty shell of perpetual vibrations in the ether itself, extending all about the universe before us, allowing light and electro-magnetic communication waves to pass through it, unchanged, but excluding and holding out the vibrations of matter, by meeting them, as I knew must be the case, with a vibration of equal frequency which opposed them, reflected them back, forming a barrier more impenetrable than any of solid matter, yet one all but invisible, extending about all this mighty universe, excluding from it for all time all matter from outside. Too, as I was later to learn, the great vibration-wall was impenetrable to the heat-vibrations, reflecting those of its dying suns that struck it back into the universe inside. It was for this purpose that the vast barrier had been erected, as the suns of the serpent-people failed, to prevent the escape of any of the precious heat-radiations of their few living suns, and also to place about all their universe a wall impenetrable to all invaders. Set in the ether about their universe eons before, the vibrations that made up the great barrier were perpetual and undying, a vast wall of defense about the serpent-universe.
We were flashing close along the mighty, flickering barrier's edge, now, and the speed of our ships slackened swiftly as there loomed far ahead in space two great, dark bulks starred here and there with points of white light. Moments more and they had grown to immense size as we neared them, and now we saw that these were mighty, square-walled structures of gleaming metal, each a full five thousand feet in length along each of its four sides, and half again that much in height: two colossal metal forts that floated motionless there in space, set directly in the great wall of flickering blue vibrations, and between which there was a great opening in that wall, a clear space in which was no flickering barrier, and which I divined was the single opening in all the great wall. And flanking that opening on either side hung the massive metal structures, upheld there in the void, as I guessed, by mighty generators like those of our own ships, castles of metal whose countless deadly death-beam tubes commanded the opening between them and from whose white-lit windows the serpent-garrisons of them gazed out upon us, great space-forts hung there at the vibration-wall's one opening, guarding the gates of a universe!
In toward the narrow opening between the great forts swept our ships, and as they moved slowly inward there flashed a challenging signal of lights from those forts, answered at once by similar signals from our ships. Then we were driving inward, between the towering metal castles on either side, flashing in through the great vibration-wall and into the dying galaxy itself. With generators again humming at high speed our half-hundred ships swept on, into the thronging thousands of dead and dying suns that swarmed before us, inside the colossal protecting shell of the great vibration-wall.
All about us now were great hordes of swarming dark-stars that we could but dimly glimpse, as our ships flashed between them, vast throngs of black and burned-out suns that outnumbered the few still flaming stars by hundreds to one. Here and there about us, though, as we swept on, we could make out a red sun or two, some comparatively brilliant and others so dark and far gone that they seemed only like giant cooling embers in the black heavens. Clusters there were, too, of which all but one or two suns would be black and dead, and as we flashed on into the depths of this universe we began to realize at last what tremendous necessity it had been that had sent the serpent-peoples driving out through the limitless void in search of a new universe.
Far ahead, though, there loomed before us as we sped on a trio of giant crimson suns more brilliant than any we had yet seen in this dying universe, and which hung at its center, each of them as large as great Canopus itself in our own galaxy. In a great triangle they hung there, two of them much brighter than the other, a mighty triplet of titanic waning suns that seemed like the dying monarchs of the vast and dying realm about them. It was down toward these three great suns that our ships were slanting now, down toward the space at the center of their great triangle, and now we saw that in that space there swung a single mighty world, a dark, immense planet of size inconceivable, almost as large as the three great suns at whose center it turned, and whose light and heat fell perpetually upon it.
Broader and broader the great turning world was growing as we slanted down toward it, until it lay like a tremendous dark shield beneath us, filling all the heavens below. As our ships sank still lower toward it, speed swiftly slackening, we began to make out details on its surface, to make out what seemed to be a vast mass of palely shining structures, towers and walls and vast, terraced buildings that glowed all with pale blue light, indescribably ghostly in appearance as they soared into the dusky, crimson light of the three encircling suns. Here and there through the masses of these blue-shining structures ran streets, narrow openings in which swarmed great masses of the writhing serpent-people. And as I gazed down upon this tremendous city, upon the countless glowing structures of pale blue light that made it up, my astonishment at what I saw broke from me in a startled cry.
"This city!" I exclaimed. "Its buildings are of vibrations like the great wall around their universe!"
A city of vibrations! A mighty city that covered apparently all this giant planet, and yet whose every structure was built, not of matter but of etheric-vibrations that were matter-resistant like the great wall, vibrations infinitely more lasting and impenetrable than any matter, and projected upward at will into buildings of any shape or size. Here and there in the mighty city, even as we sped down over it, we could see buildings vanishing instantaneously, could see other mighty buildings springing as instantly into being, all of the same pale blue light, reared or destroyed instantly by snapping on or off the vibrations that were projected upward to form them!
Now, as our ships slanted down over the vast mass of pale-glowing structures that stretched from horizon to horizon, I saw that ahead and beneath there lay amid those structures a mighty circular clearing, scores of miles in diameter and paved smoothly with the same pale blue force as the city's buildings and streets. In this vast circle, ranged regularly in long rows, rested thousands upon countless thousands of gleaming oval space-ships, in all stages of completion. Over and among them, swarming ceaselessly through them and toiling to complete them, moved mighty hordes of the serpent-creatures, armed with great tools of strange design, the thunderous clamor of their work coming up to us through the great planet's air. It was the immense workshop of the serpent-races that lay beneath us, I knew, in which their hordes labored ceaselessly to complete the mighty fleet that was to carry them through the void to our universe!
It was not the ranks of half-built ships, though, nor the toiling throngs among them, that held our gaze in the vast circular clearing over which we were racing. It was the colossal shape that loomed at that clearing's center and that occupied fully half the area of its vast circle, a stupendous metal cone-structure that rose in the air before us for fully a score of miles, the diameter of its base almost as great, a gigantic, smooth-sided mountain of metal towering there above the countless ships and workers in the great clearing around it, and above the far-stretching city about that clearing. Past its side our ships were speeding, and we could see now that about it and upon it there labored other great masses of serpent-creatures, swarming in and out of the heavy doors that swung open in its sides at various levels, and laboring upon the great masses of machinery that we could glimpse inside. Some of these, we saw, were great generators like those of our ships, making it clear that the vast cone was intended to race through space. Then, as Korus Kan's keen eyes peered toward and into its interior as we flashed past, he turned toward us, startled.
"It's a colossal death-beam projector!" he exclaimed. "One that can move through space like their ships—and that can stab forth a death-beam of unthinkable size! With that, when they complete it, they can wipe out all life on a whole world with a single flash of the stupendous beam!"
Stunned, we gazed toward it as our ships flashed past. The tremendous cone itself was apparently complete, from vast base to the truncated, flattened tip. The generators that were to move it through space were apparently all installed, and the great hordes of serpent-workers who swarmed in it now were beginning to place in it the massed mechanisms for the production of the colossal death-beam, which would be projected up through a tremendous, hollow tube or tunnel running up from the great cone's interior to the great, round opening at its truncated tip. The terrific beam, generated in that interior, would flash out of that opening at the top in whatever direction the vast cone itself was headed in space, would flash through space with its tremendous power for immense distances, spreading out fanwise and expanding in every direction as it flashed on, until it struck the planet at which it was aimed, enveloping all that planet in its ghostly glow and wiping out instantly all life upon it! This, then, was the great weapon of irresistible power which the captured records of the serpent-creatures had mentioned! And irresistible it was, I saw now; for with it, when completed, the serpent-creatures could sally forth and with one sweep of the colossal beam destroy all fleets of space-ships opposing them by annihilating their crews, could descend upon our universe and with that same great beam wipe out all life upon world after world of our galaxy, swiftly, resistlessly, until in all our universe was left no living thing except themselves!
But now, even as we stared in horror and amazement at the vast cone, our ships were driving past it, still over the great clearing filled with close-ranked masses of the half-built ships, until before and beneath us lay the mighty circle's edge. And now we saw that beyond it, touching it, there lay another smaller circle of clear space, amid the vast city's crowding structures of blue light, a circle from which throngs of space-ships were constantly rising and upon which others were descending, it being obviously one of the points of departure and arrival for all ships. Down toward it our own ships were speeding, slower with every moment, until at last they had landed at this smaller circle's edge, our own closest to that edge, the pale-glowing mighty buildings towering up just beside us.
Then the space-doors of our ships were clanging open, and their occupants were writhing forth from them. A moment and the door of our prison snapped open; then, herded forward by a half-dozen of serpent-creatures armed with small death-beam tubes, we were marched out of the ship and onto the smooth pavement of blue force that covered this circle also. There, massed together, we were halted for a moment, and took the opportunity to stare about. From the ships behind us, just landed, the last of the serpent-crews had writhed forth, passing across to a narrow street that opened through the mass of towering, shimmering buildings before us, from the circular clearing's edge. We ourselves were being marched toward that street, now, the great oval ships lying empty and deserted behind us, and at sight of their open doors I turned and twitched the arm of Jhul Din, walking beside me.
"It's a chance in a million to get away!" I whispered, to him and to Korus Kan. "If we can overpower these guards and get back inside our ship——"
They turned toward me, startled, and then as they glanced back toward the deserted ships their eyes lit with excitement. A moment more and I had whispered my plan, glancing toward the half-dozen guards behind us, and then the next moment we put it into effect, Jhul Din suddenly slumping to the blue-force pavement and lying motionless, sprawled as though suddenly stricken down. It was the most primitive of ruses, and I could only hope in that moment that our guards might not have had experience of it. The next moment, though, they had seen the motionless form of the big Spican, and with a natural perplexity had writhed forward toward it, holding their beam-tubes, though, gripped in the coils of their strange bodies, alertly toward ourselves. Beside the big crustacean they halted, tubes trained still upon us as they inspected him. Then the next moment the Spican had reached out his great arms with inconceivable swiftness and suddenness, grasping the serpent-guards beside him before they could turn their tubes down upon him, threshing with them in sudden fierce battle as we rushed forward to aid him.
The next moment we were all struggling there with those guards in a wild mêlée, their deadly tubes knocked from their grasp by Jhul Din in his leap upon them. With the strength and fury of despair we flung ourselves upon them, rending their writhing bodies to fragments as they sought to coil about us, our hoarse shouts rising above their own hissing cries of fear and alarm. In but a moment, it seemed, we were crushing the last of them beneath us, Jhul Din and one or two of our crew leaping already toward the open door of our ship, while we staggered up to follow. But as we did so there came from behind us other hissing cries, and we whirled about, then stopped short. For back from the street into which they had just gone were rushing the serpent-crews of the ships behind us, a resistless horde that was flashing upon us with the ghostly death-beams of their tubes stabbing full toward us!
8. The Hall of the Living Dead
Racing forward as they were, the serpent-creatures rushing upon us could only loose their death-beams at chance upon us, and it was that alone that saved us, the deadly rays going wide except for one that struck and annihilated two of our party in its wild whirling. Then, before they could loose the beams again upon us, we had rushed forward to meet them and were among them; while at the same moment I shouted hoarsely over my shoulder to Jhul Din, who with his three followers had reached now the open door of our ship, behind us, and who now had hesitated for an instant as he saw our new foes rush down upon us.
"Go on, Jhul Din!" I cried. "Get away in the ship—we'll hold them till you get clear——!"
Then we were meeting the serpent-creatures before us, and the next few moments we seemed surrounded, weighed down, by a solid mass of writhing bodies at which we struck crazily with the last of our strength. Even as we struggled wildly, though, I heard above the shouts and hissing cries about me the clang of the ship's space-doors, the swift humming of its generators; then as I staggered clear of my opponents for a moment I saw the great craft, with Jhul Din at the controls in its pilot room, lifting suddenly from the clearing, slanting steeply upward at immense speed, vanishing almost instantly in the crimson sunlight above. I yelled with exultation at the sight, and then was pulled down once more by my opponents, held tightly with Korus Kan and the others, as with wild hissing cries the greater part of the serpent-creatures rushed to their ships.
A moment more and two score of their craft were shooting sharply upward in hot pursuit of Jhul Din and his fleeing ship. Held tightly by our serpent-captors, we waited with them the return of the pursuing ships. Would they catch the big Spican? Slowly the minutes dragged past, while in the gulf of space above us, we knew, Jhul Din and his three followers were racing, twisting, fighting against that remorseless pursuit that would track him by the space-charts. Then at last, after a wait that seemed eternities in length, the dark, long shapes of the ships that had pursued him drove down from above and landed beside us, their serpent-crews emerging, but without trace of Jhul Din or his ship. Whether he had managed to elude them and drive out between the great space-forts into open space and escape, or whether he had met his end beneath their death-beams, we could not say nor guess.
I knew, though, that they would hardly have given up the pursuit unsuccessfully so soon, and it was with doubt and fear in my heart that I rose now in response to the motioned commands of our captors. Guarding us now with a score or more of death-beam tubes they marched us across the circle toward the street that opened from it, and then down that street's length, between the mighty structures of blue force on either side. Half-transparent as were those buildings of pale blue light, we could see in them all the various floors and levels, as though in buildings of blue glass, and on those levels great ranks of half-glimpsed mechanisms tended by moving, writhing throngs of serpent-beings. Other throngs of them moved about us in the narrow street, from building to building, passing and repassing around us as we marched along.
To these, though, and to the buildings about us we paid but small attention; for at the end of the narrow street down which we were marching there loomed a great blue-shining structure of the same vibration as the others, but which dwarfed them by its tremendous size. Its vast, terraced sides slanted up for level upon mighty level, and as we neared it we saw that the street itself ended in it, passing through the high, great doorway before us into the shining structure's interior. In and out of it were pouring hordes of the serpent-creatures, and into it we were marched by our guards, through the great hall inside and on through a succession of other corridors in which writhed serpent-throngs. Through the open doors of the rooms along those corridors, as we passed by them, I could see serpent-creatures grouped about low, desk-like platforms, could see massed rows of great mechanisms that seemed tabulating or recording machines of some sort, saw other great rooms filled with flexible metal rolls like those we had captured with our oval ship, great collections of written records, and realized that this huge building must hold within itself the central controlling government of all the races of the serpent-creatures, on this great central world and on the worlds that revolved about the few living suns in the universe about us.
Our captors halted us, at last, before a door heavily guarded by serpent-creatures with ray-tubes, and while one of our own guards passed through the door into the great rooms we could glimpse inside, the remainder kept close watch upon us. I sensed that our own fate was being decided in those rooms beside us, and a few moments later saw that my guess had been right, for there came out the serpent-creature who had gone in, giving to our guards brief hissing orders. At once they marched us onward, emerging again into the great central hall that ran through the vast, blue-shimmering building, and progressing with us down that great, crowded corridor, until they turned us sharply to the right, through a big open door into a mighty hall or room, the nature and purpose of which we could not grasp for the moment.
It was filled with great, transparent cases, ranged in long, regular rows, extending from flickering blue-light wall to wall of the vast hall. In those cases there were shapes and figures, rigid and unmoving, that had apparently once been living things, and that were of a strangeness inconceivable. In hundreds, in thousands, they were grouped there in the protecting cases, beasts and beings all but indescribable in appearance, so strange were they even to our eyes, which had seen all the countless forms of life of our own galaxy. There was, in a case near us, a vast flat thing of white flesh, disk-like and scores of feet in diameter, with a single staring eye at its center. In another case was a great, many-legged cylinder of flesh without discernible features whatever. In still another, just before us, a black, powerful-looking insect-shape that was apparently double-headed, with two sets of black, beady eyes. All down the great hall's length stretched the rows of cases, filled with beings of which the sight of some alone was a creeping horror, and as we gazed at that incredible collection of alien forms in amazement, its significance rushed upon me.
"It's a museum!" I exclaimed. "A great collection of the living forms that have existed in this dying universe—preserved here for countless ages, perhaps, out of the past!"
As I spoke, though, there were coming down toward us from the far end of the great hall two serpent-creatures who seemed the custodians of this strange collection. Our guards addressed to them a few hissing commands, and the two turned, seemed to survey the cases about them, while we stared in perplexity. Then one turned toward a niche inset in the wall, in which rested two transparent containers or tubes of liquid, one of bright red and the other of green, and a long, slender metal needle that was apparently a hypodermic of some sort. Thrusting the needle into the red liquid, the serpent-creature holding it advanced to the case nearest us, which contained only the double-headed insect-creature. He swung the side of the case open, and then, with a swift jab, inserted the needle in the body of the thing inside.
There was a moment of silence, and then, to our amazement and horror, the insect-thing moved, its eyes roving from side to side, its limbs twitching. The thing was alive! The two serpent-creatures stepped toward the case, as it came to life, holding death-beam tubes toward it and addressing it in hissing tones. Apparently it was of some intelligence, for in response to those orders it stepped outside the case, down the hall toward another case which was all but filled by other strange shapes. Into this it stepped, at the command of the two, and then the one with the needle filled it with the green fluid, and inserted this in turn into the thing's body. At once that body stiffened, ceased to move, the thing becoming as rigid and unlife-like in appearance as before, its eyes staring stonily ahead in all the appearance of death.
Horror filled me at the sight, horror that sickened me, for I saw now that the things about us, the countless strange shapes in these rows of cases, were all as alive and conscious as ourselves, their life and intelligence unharmed but their bodies thrown into a state of rigid suspended animation by the insertion of the green fluid into them, a fluid that must be like the poisons with which some insects are able to keep their captured prey alive and unmoving indefinitely, a fluid that suspended all animation instantly and that could only be neutralized by the injection of the opposing red fluid, though always the victim remained conscious and alive.Alive!These myriad alien shapes about us—rigid and motionless, yet living and conscious, living perhaps for ages in that living death—my brain reeled at the thought. I turned to Korus Kan, sick with horror, but then stopped short, stiffened. For now the serpent-creature grasping the metal needle and the tube of green fluid was coming toward us!
All the horror of the fate intended for us burst across my brain in one flash of awful comprehension, then, and a strangled cry broke from me. "They're going to keep us here too!" I cried, pointing with trembling hand. "Keep us here as strange beings—in living death in this museum of strange beings!"
A moment we stood, in horror-stricken silence, and then as the full awfulness of the thing reserved for us penetrated the brains of my companions they uttered a medley of hoarse shouts of rage and horror and as one leapt forward upon the serpent-creatures with the fluid-tubes and upon our guards.
I think that we expected no better than death in that moment, for the death-beam tubes of the guards were full upon us, but I think too that we all preferred a swift, clean death to the horror of living death that awaited us in this museum of hell. But the very motive that made us desire death prevented the guards from loosing it upon us, preferring to follow their orders and place us in the collection about us rather than annihilate us. For instead of loosing the rays, as we sprang, they leapt to meet us, at the same time giving utterance to loud, hissing cries of alarm.
Our guards outnumbered us, and though we leapt upon them with all the energy of horror and despair, striving to wrest the death-tubes from their grasp, they coiled about and held us, while into the great hall from the big corridor outside there rushed in answer to their alarm other scores of serpent-creatures, leaping likewise upon us. Wearied as we were and outnumbered by five to one, our struggle, though fierce, was of short duration, and then we were held completely by the creatures about us, while toward us again came the two serpent-creatures with the metal needle and two liquid-tubes. First toward me they came, dipping the needle into the green liquid and then stabbing it into my arm.
I shrank deeply as the sharp needle pierced my skin, but the next moment ceased to shrink, as through me there ran a wave of cold, a flood of utter iciness that held me motionless, unable to move. No muscle of mine, down to the smallest, could I control, lying there staring straight ahead, unmoving, unwinking, unbreathing even. My lungs, my heart, my blood, all had stopped moving in the instant that the poison flooded through me, yet my brain was as clear or clearer than ever, coldly clear, as though attached to it was no body whatever. My senses, though, still functioned, and though all power of motion had left me I could still see and hear as clearly as ever. It was as though my brain had been suddenly lifted from the mass of flesh that was my body, and endowed with a strange, lifeless life of its own.
Now the guards rose from me, leaving me lying motionless and rigid, and turned toward Korus Kan, who was being held down by others. His metal body seemed to puzzle them for an instant, and then they solved the problem by injecting the needle of green fluid into the nerve-tissues at the edge of his eyes, from which it would spread instantly to the other living organs cased by his metal body. Another moment and he too lay like me, rigid and powerless to move, our eyes meeting in an unchanging, stony stare. Within minutes more the green fluid had been injected into the last of our score of followers, and we had all become but rigid living statues, our consciousness and senses alone unaffected. Then by the serpent-creatures we were set into the transparent case from which the double-headed insect-thing had been moved to make way for us, were placed in a sitting position with backs against the case's sides, and then it was closed and the guards passed out of the big hall, leaving in it only the two serpent-creatures who were its custodians.
Rigid, unmoving, unbreathing, yet with consciousness, mind and senses as clear as ever, living brains cased in bodies that were helpless and motionless, I think that no position of any in all time could have been more terrible than ours. Had consciousness been suspended also, with the powers of our bodies, the captivity we suffered would have been but a dreamless sleep, at least; but to allow our consciousness and intelligence to remain, our bodies severed from our control—that was a torture that surely none other could ever equal. Statue-like we sat there, while hour followed hour, gazing always in the same direction with unmoving and unwinking eyes. Certainly no wonder would it have been had we gone mad in the first hours of that ghastly, terrible imprisonment.
As the hours, the days, dragged past, though, I bent all my mental efforts toward the keeping of my sanity, and though at times my brain reeled beneath our terrible predicament, I desperately forced my thoughts into other channels. From where I sat I could gaze out into the great corridor outside the room, and that at least gave me something moving to contemplate, as through it swept the never-ceasing hordes of the serpent-people, a rush of activity that dwindled never until the rising of the darkest of the three suns marked the coming of the night, the sleep-period of the serpent-people. The light of that darker sun was so far dimmer than that of the other two that as this world turned between the three one-third of each day was spent in a dusky red darkness, a strange night in which all activity in the vast serpent-city about us seemed to cease, only our room's two serpent-guards and some others here and there outside remaining alert, our two room-guards being replaced at the beginning of each night by two others who alternated with them in their duties.
It was these things alone, though, the coming of night and the changing of our guards, the cessation and recommencement of the activity in the corridor outside, the waning and waxing of the crimson light that fell through the great building's flickering blue vibration-walls, that alone marked for us the passage of time. Day was following day while we sat on there in living death, unmoving as stones, and I knew that with each day the great fleet of the serpent-creatures I had glimpsed in the clearing would be approaching nearer to completion, as would the colossal death-beam cone with which they meant to wipe out all the races of all the galaxy's worlds. And we, on whom had rested the one chance of our universe, had failed—we were prisoners. I could not believe that Jhul Din, with his two or three followers, had managed to get through the great vibration-wall about this universe and speed to the Andromeda universe for help. Our last hope was gone, and the last hope of our galaxy with it, prisoned as we were in the helpless flesh of our own bodies, from which there could be no escape, lacking even the power to destroy ourselves and end our endless torture.
The passing days became blurred and confused in my mind, as we sat on there, and I felt that my brain was beginning to give at last beneath the awful strain. Time still I could roughly measure, though, by the waning of activity in the corridor outside, by the darkening of the crimson light that slanted through the pale blue walls. I think that it was on the tenth day of our imprisonment that I watched that light darkening, as always, wondering for how many times I was to see it thus, for how many days, years, ages, we were to lie in this living death, in the serpent-creatures' museum. As I watched, the passing throngs in the corridor outside were thinning, disappearing, with the coming of the dusky night, and soon there was almost complete silence about us, only the low hissing of the two serpent-guards, near the room's door, as they conversed there, breaking the stillness. Then suddenly my brooding thoughts were broken into by sharp surprize as I glimpsed a big, stealthy shape that showed itself for a moment in the corridor outside, and then dodged swiftly back.
With a sudden flame of excitement leaping in me for the first time since our imprisonment, I gazed toward the door, eyes unmoving as always. A moment more and the dark, erect shape that I had glimpsed outside came slowly into view once more, peering around the door's edge at the two serpent-guards, who for the moment were turned away from it. Seeing this, the lurking shape came slowly into the room, through the door from the shadows of the corridor, and as it did so I saw it clearly, and well it was for me that I could not speak or surely I would have shouted aloud. For it was Jhul Din!
A great wave of hope flooded through my brain as I saw the big Spican move stealthily inside, a thick metal bar in his grasp, his eyes roving about the dusky-lit great room. Then, as they fell upon our own case, upon us sitting motionless, I saw him gasp. A moment he surveyed us, my eyes staring stonily straight into his own as we sat still rigid and unmoving, and then he had turned, was moving silently toward the two unsuspecting guards. Closer he crept toward them, while I watched in an agony of suspense, and then as he reached them, raised his great bar above his head, the two creatures, warned by some slight sound, whirled suddenly around and confronted him!
Instantly the death-tubes they held came up, but in the moment that they did so Jhul Din's bar had smashed down upon them in a great, crushing blow that laid both lifeless on the blue force-floor. Then the Spican sprang to our case, opening its side and lifting us out, seeking with rough restorative measures to revive us. Yet we lay as silent and rigid as ever, and I saw despair creep into his eyes, I could have shouted to him in my agony of mind had not my muscles been as far-severed from my brain's control as ever. Then the Spican raised from his fruitless efforts, gazed despairingly about, until his eyes fell upon the niche in the wall that held the tubes of red and green fluid. With a leap he was upon them, bringing them and the needle back toward us.
A moment he studied them, in doubt, then inserted the needle in the green fluid and pierced my forearm with it. I could have screamed to him his mistake had I had power of speech, for the green fluid injected into me had no effect upon me whatever, since I lay already beneath its force. Seeing this he swiftly made trial of the red fluid, injecting this in the same manner into my body, and then, as he gazed anxiously down upon my rigid figure, I felt a sudden warmth flooding through me, and for the first time in all those days becameawareof my body, felt muscles and limbs moving in answer to my will's commands, felt heart and breathing starting after their long cessation. Then I was staggering up to my feet, the Spican's great arm about me, reeling upward with muscles utterly strange and cramped after those days of living death.
"Jhul Din!" I cried, my voice strange to my own ears after that time of speechlessness, and he gripped my arm reassuringly.
"Steady, Dur Nal," he said. "You're out of that now, and we'll win clear of this hellish city yet."
As he spoke he was dropping to the floor, injecting swiftly into the bodies of the rest the red fluid, beginning with Korus Kan, and as he did so he explained to me swiftly how he and his three followers had managed to elude the ships that had pursued him by fleeing from them into a near-by cluster of dead and dying suns, and pretending to have perished by crashing into a great dark-star, landing his ship upon its barren, burned-out surface and escaping the scrutiny of the pursuing ships, who returned in the belief that he and his ship had met annihilation. In that hiding-place, upon that black and airless and lightless star, he had remained for days, not daring to venture forth amid the swarms of serpent-ships that filled the space-lanes about him, yet resolved to return and ascertain our fate. When at last, days later, he had been able to venture out, back to this vast world and down upon it through the dusky night, he had boldly landed the ship where it would excite no suspicion, in the landing-circle from which he had first escaped in it. Then, leaving his little crew of three in it and stealing through the shadows of the silent streets toward the great central building where he hoped against hope to find some trace of us, he had made his way through the darkened corridors of the huge structure until he had stumbled upon the strange museum of the serpent-people where we were prisoned.
While he swiftly explained this to me Korus Kan and our followers were staggering up beside me as the injections of red fluid revived them, one by one, and I turned toward the door, then uttered a horror-stricken exclamation. For in the corridor outside a single serpent-creature faced us, attracted perhaps by the sound of our voices, its glassy eyes full upon us! Even in the instant that I saw it, before ever I could leap upon it, it had turned with incredible quickness and was flashing back down the corridor, farther into the great building, uttering as it did so a high, hissing cry. And in an instant that cry was taken up and re-echoed in all the great structure about us, by the roused serpent-creatures who were rushing in answer to it!
"The alarm!" I cried. "Out of the building and to the ship!"
With lightning swiftness now Jhul Din was injecting in the last of our followers the restorative red fluid, and then as those last ones stumbled up into consciousness beside us, we raced toward the door, out into the corridor. There, abruptly, we stopped short, our last wild hopes of escape in that instant blasted. For less than a thousand feet down the great corridor from us, pouring out into it from every quarter of the vast building's interior in answer to the hissing cries of alarm, there was racing down upon us a great mass of hundreds upon hundreds of the writhing serpent-creatures!
9. A Dash for Freedom
Doom stared at us in that instant as the serpent-creatures rushed down the great corridor toward us, for well we knew that never could we win our way down the long street to our waiting ship with that pursuit behind us. For a flashing moment as we stood there, stunned, it seemed that recapture was inevitable, and then as a sudden thought flared across my brain I cried out to my companions.
"Get out of the building!" I cried. "I can hold them here——!"
They hesitated, and then sprang down the corridor toward the street, while at the same instant I leapt into the great museum-hall from which we had just emerged. With a single bound I had grasped the needle and tube of restorative red fluid and was at the great transparent cases, ripping the sides open frantically and stabbing the needle with lightning swiftness into their occupants. Those in a dozen or more cases I had swiftly treated thus before I dropped the tube and needle and leapt back to the door, into the corridor. As I did so I had seen the first of the strange, terrible shapes I had touched with the needle beginning to stir, to move from their cases.
As I sprang back out into the corridor, though, the racing masses of the serpent-creatures were but a scant hundred feet behind me, my own companions racing out of the building ahead of me, now. The serpent-things loosed no rays upon us, desiring, I knew, to return us to that hell of living death from which we had escaped, but as I sprang down the corridor they were so close behind that another moment, I knew, would see my capture and that of my friends ahead. Then, just as the serpent-creatures, racing behind me, reached the door of the museum, they halted, recoiled. For out into the corridor from that museum-hall had flopped a great, terrible shape, the mighty disk of pale flesh with a single central eye that my needle had been first to revive!
Instantly it had moved upon the serpent-creatures upon whom its glaring eye fell, and before they could escape had thrown its vast disk of flesh about a mass of scores of them, bunching its body swiftly together then with terrific power and crushing them within it. At another mass of them it leapt, ravening with terrific fury after its prisonment of untold ages of living death, while out of the museum there came after it the other shapes I had revived, awful insect-beings that leapt upon the serpent-creatures with terrible claws and fangs, heedless of the death-beams that flashed toward them, many-limbed things of flesh that whirled forward as fiercely to the attack, grotesque, terrible monsters of a dozen different sorts that leapt now upon the serpent-creatures who had prisoned them for ages with inconceivable raging power, heaping about them great masses of crushed and mangled serpent-dead.
Only in a glance over my shoulder did I glimpse that massacre of the serpent-creatures behind me, for I was racing on down the corridor and out of the building into the narrow street, where my friends awaited me. With a word I explained to them what had happened, and instantly we set off down the street, between the great, towering buildings of beaming blue force that lay silent and dead now in the dusky darkness, only their own flickering light and that of the vast, dim-red sun that swung in the black heavens above lighting us forward as we raced on. Behind, though, in the great building from which we had fled, were rising appalling cries, the hissing utterances of the serpent-creatures and the strange and awful cries of the things with which they battled.
Now about us were rising other cries as the serpent-creatures across all the city began to rouse beneath the terrific din of the wild fight in the central building. Behind us, as we raced on down the narrow street, we saw them emerging from the buildings, gazing about, and then as we were glimpsed, fleeing toward the landing-circle where lay the ships, other cries went up and after us leapt the serpent-things from all along the street, pouring into that street from its buildings and from adjacent streets and racing after us.
But a few hundred yards ahead lay the landing-circle, and as we ran on we could make out the gleaming, great shapes of the oval ships lying upon it, could discern the shape of our own awaiting ship, at the circle's edge, its door open before us. Toward that black opening, as toward some tremendous magnet, we stumbled on with the last of our strength, but close behind came the serpent-creatures in ever-increasing masses, the alarm spreading now over all the gigantic city about us, and there lay still a distance that seemed infinite between us and that open door. Then, when we were but a scant hundred feet from it, the serpent-creatures hardly more than that behind us, Korus Kan slipped, stumbled and went down.
We wheeled around, reaching down to help him up, but halted even as we did so. For the serpent-creatures behind us were within yards of us now, hissing cries of triumph rising from them as they writhed toward us. Then, in the next moment, from the great, looming bulk of our ship ahead there stabbed down and over us a shaft of blinding crimson light, a narrow, deadly ray that struck the writhing masses of our pursuers and swept through them in a great, slicing curve, sending them into annihilation in dazzling bursts of light as it touched them. Those farther behind came racing on, nevertheless, but before they could reach us we had stumbled on and into the ship, and with space-doors clanging and generators suddenly droning loudly, our ship shot up into the darkness just in time to escape a dozen pale death-beams that sprang toward us from the mass of our pursuers.
Up into the darkness above the vast, blue-glowing city we flashed, Jhul Din and Korus Kan and I bursting up into the pilot room and replacing our follower there whose timely action had saved us. Beneath us the whole city was rising as the alarm spread, lights flashing out here and there among its buildings, serpent-hordes pouring into the streets, while from the landing-circle from which we had just risen there shot up after us a dozen long gleaming oval ships, in close pursuit. So swiftly were they after us that before we had fully realized their nearness, their death-beams were sweeping and slicing through the darkness about us. I shouted a swift order, Korus Kan whirled the controls about and sent our ship flashing straight back into the mass of our dozen pursuers, and then we had leapt through them, our red rays striking right and left as we did so, and two of their great craft had flared there in the darkness above the great city in blinding crimson light, and we were racing up into the darkness again with the ten remaining ships farther behind, but still speeding on our track.
Upward we shot with terrific speed, and in a moment the vast, turning world beneath, covered with the masses of blue force-structures, had contracted and dwindled to a mere point beneath us as we fled up and outward into space. As we flashed up from it, though, I had glimpsed rising from it a full five hundred serpent-ships, with a score of the great disk attraction-ships, and as these lifted to follow the ten that leapt close behind us, I saw that the serpent-creatures were taking no slightest chance of our escape. I turned to Korus Kan, swiftly, as our craft leapt upward, shouting to him above the droning roar of the generators that filled our craft now.
"Head straight out toward the great vibration-wall—toward the opening in it!" I cried.
"We'll never get through that opening—between the space-forts!" Jhul Din exclaimed. "They'll have received word of our escape, and will be waiting for us!"
I shook my head. "We'll have to run between them and take our chance!" I yelled. "It's our one chance of escape from this universe!"
Now the giant central world beneath was no longer visible, as we raced upward and outward from it at terrific speed, and ahead loomed one of the three giant suns that lay about that world. We were leaping forward straight toward it, and in an instant it had broadened across the heavens to a stupendous disk of raging crimson fire, a thunderous, titanic sun into which we seemed inevitably doomed to plunge, but as it flared across the firmament before us Korus Kan swerved the controls, and we were flashing by it, past the red star's edge and on outward through the dying universe. Traveling at a speed that was all but suicidal to use inside any universe, thrumming on at all but our utmost velocity, we reeled outward through the throngs of dead and dying stars about us, while behind us at a speed that matched our own our ten pursuers came relentlessly on, with the five hundred-odd ships that we had seen rising from the serpent-city following us in turn.
Out—out—the minutes of that mad outward flight through the dying universe are but a confused, strange memory of a wild, awful race through the massed dead and dying stars that thronged thick about us, and between which we drove with such terrific swiftness that hardly could we glimpse them in passing save on our space-chart. On that chart I saw a close-massed cluster of dark suns full before us, saw the Antarian swing the ship lightning-like sidewise to avoid it, then sharply drive the controls back again as before us a crimson-flaming star about which turned countless worlds of the serpent-people loomed before us. Out—out—flashing crazily on past crimson sun and thundering dark-star, through the massed suns of great dead and dying clusters and past far-swinging planets, with the ten long ships behind clinging remorselessly to us—out—out—until far ahead there became visible across all the heavens before us the wavering pale blue tight of the great vibration-wall that encircled this universe.
Out between the last of the dying universe's dark and dying suns we were racing, toward that mighty wall, and as we leapt forward I pointed toward it. "The space-forts!" I exclaimed. "Make for the opening between them, Korus Kan—and slacken speed a little!"
Straight toward the two great metal structures set in the pale blue-shining wall we leapt, two huge fortresses of gleaming metal from whose narrow openings came brilliant white light, whose mighty death-beam tubes swung threateningly out toward the space between them, the single vibrationless opening in the vast and impenetrable vibration-wall. They had been warned, were ready for us, we knew, and knew too that not even by a miracle could our ship run between those towering forts without coming under the deadly beams, yet still toward them we leapt, at a speed slackened a little, now, while after us like leaping things of prey came the ten ships, rapidly overhauling us, flashing closer each moment.
We had almost reached the great opening in the wall, now, the ten ships behind almost upon us, and as we flashed through space the whole scene was like one from some weird dream—the thronging dark and dying suns of the great universe behind us, the tremendous, all but invisible, pale blue wall of light that enclosed it, the single opening in that wall full before us, guarded on either side by the mighty metal space-forts, the great ships leaping after us just behind. We were flashing into the narrow opening—from the great space-forts to right and left the deadly death-beams were stabbing out toward us in scores, in hundreds—the ships behind were almost upon us, their own death-beams stabbing toward us—and then I cried a single word to Korus Kan. He thrust the controls suddenly forward with a lightning-like move, and just as our ship was flashing into the narrow opening it dipped sharply downward instead and plummeted down through space while the ships just behind, before they could dip with us, had rushed into the opening and into the hell of death-beams that crossed and recrossed in it from the space-forts on each side!
The next instant, while we curved swiftly upward again, we saw the ten ships that had rushed into that opening whirling blindly about as the death-beams from their own space-forts seared through them and wiped out all life inside them. Those in the great space-forts, realizing those ten to be their own ships, had turned off the beams in the next moment but were an instant too late, since in the narrow opening the ten ships were whirling crazily to that side and this, without guiding intelligence inside them, smashing into each other and into the space-forts on each side as they rushed insanely in all directions. And even as that wild confusion inside the opening was at its height our own ship had curved up and was flashing at full speed into the opening, between the space-forts!
For an instant, in that wild chaos of whirling ships, those in the space-forts did not glimpse our own flying ship and in that instant we were half through the great opening between them. Then they had seen us, had loosed their beams upon us in scores, and in the next instant all about us seemed a single tremendous mêlée of aimlessly whirling ships, and gigantic space-forts, and pale death-beams that sliced and swept about us. Thick about us flashed those ghostly fingers of death, and full before us two of the whirling ships collided and smashed with terrific force, then Korus Kan had dodged them by a swift shifting of the controls, our generators roared suddenly louder as he turned on our utmost speed, and the crazy chaos of ships and beams and forts about us had suddenly vanished, replaced by darkness and silence unutterable.
We werethrough, were racing out into the void again with the great vibration-wall and the dying universe it enclosed and the pursuing serpent-ships inside it dropping farther behind each moment! In the blackness that encircled us the dying universe was a far-flung, dwindling glow behind us, and our own a far patch of misty light to the left, but there shone in the darkness far ahead a misty disk of radiant light, and it was toward this that our ship was heading. For we were flashing out again upon our interrupted mission, were flying out through the awful gulf of outer space once more toward the Andromeda universe!