For the mighty city was—empty! Empty, lifeless, its streets deserted and bare, its vast mass of towering structures of blue vibrations without occupant of any kind! No single serpent-shape moved in all that tremendous city, and I saw that upon the great clearing where the vast serpent-fleet and the colossal death-beam cone had rested there was now nothing. The world beneath us, the universe about us, were a world, universe—deserted!
"Its vast mass of towering structures of blue vibrations was without occupants of any kind."
"Its vast mass of towering structures of blue vibrations was without occupants of any kind."
"Its vast mass of towering structures of blue vibrations was without occupants of any kind."
"Too late!" Jhul Din's cry came to my ears like the voice of doom. "The defense of the gate was only to delay us, and the serpent-races have gone—they've struck! They've massed all their hordes in their great fleet and with their giant death-beam cone have sailed out across the void to attack our universe! We're too late!"
Too late! The thought beat upon my brain like drum-beats of horror as we stood there, in utter silence. All had been in vain—our tremendous journey, our fierce struggles, the loss of Korus Kan—since already far across the void the serpent-hordes in their countless ships were rushing toward our universe, where their vanguard had prepared a foothold for them. They had known that we were summoning help from the Andromeda universe, had swiftly gathered and sailed on their great attack, leaving only a force at the great gate to delay us. Too late! Then suddenly resolution flamed again inside me, and I pressed swiftly the keys before me, sent our whole fleet turning and speeding outward again—out through the dying universe away from the great trio of suns at its center—out toward the great opening in the vibration-wall.
"Too late—no!" I shouted. "We'll follow them across the void toward our own universe! They could not have completed that great death-beam cone yet—they've taken it with them to our own universe to complete it there—and if we can reach them and attack them before they have time to complete it, we yet may save our universe!"
Now our great fleet was rushing toward and through the opening in the vibration-wall, out into the void of outer space once more. There we halted, massed again in our pyramidal flight-formation, and then were turning slowly toward the left, toward the far little patch of glowing light that was our universe. Then we were moving toward it, with swiftly gathering speed, faster and faster, until at our utmost velocity we were racing through the infinite immensities of space toward it; flashing on toward the last act of the vast, cosmic drama that was rising now to its climax; rushing on through the void toward the final great battle in which the destinies of three mighty universes and all their suns and worlds and peoples were to be decided for all time!
14. Back to the Galaxy
Standing once more in the pilot room, with Jhul Din at the controls beside me, I stared out through the room's fore-windows, straining my vision out through the cosmic darkness that lay about our onward-rushing ships. Far ahead, in that darkness, lay a great, glowing mass of light, lay a radiant, disk-like mass that was resolving itself into a great swarm of brilliant stars as we rushed ever on toward it. In silence we two gazed toward it, for it was our own great galaxy that lay before us, toward which for day upon dragging day, hour upon slow hour, our mighty fleet had rushed on and on.
Now, as we gazed toward it, waxing there in splendor before us in the lightless heavens, I could not but reflect upon how infinitely strange and far a journey had been ours since we had left it, across what infinities of trackless space and upon what alien suns and worlds we had gone. Out into the infinite we had gone for the help that might save our universe, and now out of the infinite we were coming with that help, but two returning where three had gone out. Yet would the help we brought be in time to save our galaxy? Already the great serpent-hordes, we knew, would have reached that galaxy, would have settled upon the suns and worlds of the great Cancer cluster where their vanguard had made for them a base, and there they would be laboring to complete the colossal death-beam cone with which they could wipe out all the life on all the galaxy's worlds, and all our own great fleet. Could we reach them and conquer them before they completed that great cone of death?
We were within a few score hours of the galaxy ahead, I knew, and as we raced on toward it at the same unvarying velocity, its individual greater stars were burning out more clearly, and the great Cancer cluster was a tiny ball of light at the glowing swarm's edge. Countless billions of miles of space lay between us and that cluster still, I knew, yet it was with something of hope that I watched it as we flashed on. For though inside it the gigantic death-cone might be approaching completion, it would not be long before our vast fleet would be pouring down upon that cluster and upon the serpent-hordes within it, before the great cone could be finished.
As I mused thus, though, there came a low exclamation from Jhul Din, and I turned to find him peering forward into the void with a gaze suddenly tense. Then he had turned toward me and was pointing ahead and to the left into the darkness before us.
"One of the great heat-regions!" he exclaimed.
I gazed out toward it and in a moment I, too, had seen it—a dim, faint little glow of red light, flickering there in the darkness of space before us and to the left. Steadily that little glow was broadening, deepening, though, while our temperature-dials were recording swiftly rising heat outside as we neared it. There was no need to change the course of our fleet, though, since the heat-region lay toward the left and our present course would take us safely past its right edge. It was, perhaps, the same region into which we had blundered on our outward flight, and with interest we watched it as our great fleet shot forward and along its outer edge. It was a vast area of glowing crimson light to our left, now. A terrific furnace of heat-vibrations loosed by the collision of the great ether-currents through which we were plunging. Then, just as our fleet was speeding directly past the mighty, glowing region, along its outer edge, our prow turned slowly toward the left, toward the heat-region, and then we were racing straight inward toward the region's fiery heart!
For an instant I stared in stunned amazement as our ship shifted thus, then whirled around to the Spican. "Jhul Din!" I exclaimed. "The controls! The ship's heading into the heat-region!"
But already he was twisting frantically at the controls, and now he looked up wildly toward me. "The ship doesn't answer the controls!" he cried. "It's heading straight inward—and the ships behind us—!" And he pointed up toward the space-chart, where I saw now that as they rushed on, the thousands of ships behind us were shifting their course like our own and racing into the heat-region after us—racing in like us toward a fiery death! Then, as I gazed stupefied up toward the space-chart, I saw something else, saw that inches to the left of our fleet on the chart, away on the other side of the glowing heat-region from us, there hung a half-thousand ships, that showed on the chart as a close-massed swarm of dots, hanging there motionless. And as I saw them I understood, and with understanding a great shout broke from me.
"Attraction-ships!" I cried. "It's an ambush the serpent-fleet left for us if we followed them! Attraction-ships hanging there on the other side of the heat-region and pulling our ships toward themselves, and toward and into that region!"
With that cry I leapt forward, pressing swiftly a half-dozen of the keys before me, flashing an order for all ships behind to turn at right-angles immediately. Watching the chart, though, I saw that nearly all our mighty fleet was now moving into the heat-region, caught in the grip of the attraction-ships beyond it. As my order flashed, though, the last ships of our fleet, not more than a thousand in number, had turned immediately, just before they too had raced into the deadly grip, and were rushing clear. Then, as their occupants, too, saw upon the space-charts the attraction-ships hovering beyond the heat-region, I saw them race away and around the great glowing region's edge toward those attraction-ships, while the rest of all our mighty fleet was drawn farther and farther in toward its fiery heart.
All about us now was the faint red glow of the heat-region's outer portions, while swiftly the heat inside our ship was increasing, the air in the pilot room being already almost too warm to breathe. Onward we were being pulled, irresistibly, our walls beginning already to warp and crack beneath the terrific temperatures outside. Gazing forward through the glare of the great region's fiery heart, even as we were swept in toward it, I could make out through our distance-windows a swarm of great, disk-shaped craft hanging beyond the heat-region, the attraction-ships that were pulling us on to doom. Around the great region's edge toward those disk-craft our own thousand escaped ships were flashing, but before ever they could reach them, it seemed, we must perish, so awful had the heat about us become.
Then I saw our thousand ships, racing about the great region's edge, pouring down on the five hundred attraction-ships, rushing down upon them in a mad swooping charge. About ourselves the crimson glare had become all but blinding, and our walls were glowing dull red, the air about us stifling. Already Jhul Din was swaying at the controls beneath that overpowering heat, and as our walls wrenched and cracked again I knew that a moment more of the terrific heat into which we were being pulled would mean the end. But even with that realization I shouted with sudden hope, since through our tele-magnifier I had glimpsed one after another of the attraction-ships, far on the other side of the heat-region, reeling and crumpling beneath the force-shafts of our thousand attacking ships!
With every one of those attraction-ships destroyed, the pull that was drawing us into the fiery maelstrom of light and heat was lessening in strength, drawing us ever more slowly forward. But forward still we were moving, pulled by the remaining attraction-ships that fought still desperately against the thousand attacking craft, fighting to the end in their great effort to destroy all our fleet. Into the very inmost flaming heart of the great region we were plunging, now, the whole universe about us seeming but a single thunderous inferno of blood-like light and burning heat. Then, as choking and reeling I felt the ship quiver violently with the approaching end, I saw our thousand or less attacking ships beyond crashing down upon the resisting attraction-ships in one irresistible, headlong charge, and as those great disk-ships, flickering with attractive force, crumpled and vanished beneath that last wild swoop, the pull upon us suddenly relaxed, vanished also. The next moment we had shot the controls sharply over, and our ship and all the ships behind it were shooting out of that hell of heat and light into empty space once more.
Now, as we sped out into the clean cold void of space again, our ships again taking up their formation and heading toward the galaxy, I turned to Jhul Din.
"It's their last attempt to stop us!" I cried. "But we've won clear—nothing can keep us from reaching them now!"
And as our great fleet again shot forward at full speed through the void I stood now no longer tense or anxious but with the old lust for battle burning up in me stood grimly silent with eyes upon the universe ahead as its glowing mass of stars broadened across the heavens before us. For now, I knew, we had plunged through the last trap, the last delay, by which the serpent-creatures had planned to hold back and destroy us, and now nothing could prevent the final attack toward which we were racing. Our great flight outward from our galaxy for help, our terrible captivity in the dying universe, our mad flight to the Andromeda universe, and our struggle there in which one of us had gone to his end, our sailing for the dying universe with the great Andromedan fleet—all these things were drawing now toward their climax, when we were to pour down on the Cancer cluster and the serpent-creatures there in our great attack.
Humming, throbbing, droning, on through the void our great fleet shot, force-shaft cylinders and other mechanisms clanging now beneath us as our Andromedan crew cleared the decks below for action. With every hour, every moment, the galaxy's stars were shining in greater splendor ahead, a giant belt of suns across the firmament before us. My eyes roved across them, from the yellow splendor of Capella to the white brilliance of Rigel, and then something of emotion rose in me as they shifted to Antares, the great crimson star that had been Korus Kan's home sun. But my eyes hardened again as they turned toward the Cancer cluster, a great ball of suns glowing in resplendent glory at the galaxy's edge before us; for well I knew that upon the thronging worlds of its clustered suns the countless races of the serpent-creatures were gathered now, completing the gigantic death-beam cone with which they would sweep out to annihilate all life in our galaxy save themselves. Straight toward that ball of suns our fleet was leaping, and now Jhul Din turned toward me.
"You're going to drive with our fleet straight into the cluster itself?" he asked, and I nodded grimly.
"It's our only chance," I said. "All the serpent-hordes are on the worlds inside it, and we've got to reach it to destroy that great cone before they finish it."
Now the galaxy's flaring suns filled the heavens before us as our mighty armada raced in through the outer void toward them, the Cancer cluster flaming ahead in all the blinding glory of its gathered suns, those suns appearing on the upper part of our space-chart as a mass of glowing little circles, toward which our vast swarm of ship-dots was speeding. Minutes more of our terrific speed would see us reaching that cluster, I knew, and I turned toward the bank of keys before me to shift our great fleet's mass into a formation that would allow us to pour down into that ball of suns in our great attack. But as I did so, as I reached toward those keys, there came from Jhul Din a cry that held me rigid. He was gazing up toward the space-chart, and pointing.
"Look—in the cluster!" he cried. "Those dots—those ships——!"
I looked swiftly up, saw that among the massed sun-circles of the Cancer cluster, on the chart, were moving a countless number of tiny dots of black, dots that were sweeping outward from and between those sun-circles, ships that were rising from the worlds around them! Out between the cluster's glowing circles they moved, toward us, in thousands, in tens of thousands, until all hung just outside it, a huge swarm of dots as large or larger than our own, a full hundred thousand mighty ships! There in space outside the cluster that vast fleet hung, and then was moving out toward us, a tremendous swarm of dots that was creeping down across the space-chart toward our own up-moving swarm, a mighty armada that was rushing out through the void toward our own inrushing armada! And as I gazed up at the great chart, stunned, there came from beside me the Spican's cry again.
"It's the serpent-creatures' fleet! They've seen us coming—know we mean to attack the cluster and destroy the cone—and they've massed all their ships and are coming out to meet us!"
15. An Armageddon of Universes
As Jhul Din's cry rang out I stood for an instant quite still, my eyes fixed on the chart upon which that great, outrushing swarm was drawing nearer to our own each moment. It was the vast fleet we had seen building in the dying universe, I knew, that had carried all their hordes across the void to our galaxy, to the Cancer cluster, and that they were flinging out now to meet and halt us here in outer space while in that cluster they labored to complete their giant cone of death. Before ever we could attack the cluster, now, we must come to death-grips with the titanic fleet rushing out toward us, a fleet that in size and power was at least as great as our own, and for that instant hope sank within me. Then, as the two fleets rushed ever closer, my doubts dissolved into a fierce determination.
"They've come out for battle," I cried, "and battle we'll give them! A battle this time to the end!"
At the same moment I turned swiftly toward the bank of keys before me. On the space-chart I saw that the serpent-fleet was driving toward us in a long, rectangular formation, our own fleet racing in its pyramid-formation to meet it. Both tremendous armadas were moving at their utmost speeds, toward each other, but as I pressed a key that slackened the speed of our own fleet I saw the other slowing also. Then, in swift succession, I touched other keys, and out from the great mass of our fleet behind me sprang two thousand of our swiftest ships, driving out from our fleet in a great fringe, ahead of us and to each side and above and below; and in a few moments more there leapt from the approaching serpent-armada a similar line of scouts.
Tensely I gazed out into the void as our two fleets neared each other, the scouts of each driving far ahead and to the sides, while steadily our own speed was slowing as I touched one after another of the keys before me. On the space-chart I could see the foremost scout-ships of each fleet almost meeting, now, but even in that moment of suspense the strangeness of my position and of all about me struck home to me—the tremendous gloom of space about us, the blazing suns of our galaxy stretched across the firmament ahead, the Cancer cluster a brilliant ball of close-massed suns among them, the two tremendous fleets that were rushing through the void toward each other. With every moment the speed of the oncoming serpent-fleet was slackening, though, and smoothly that of our own was lessening as my fingers moved upon the bank of keys before me that held the control of all our hundred thousand ships. Surely never in any struggle in all time had any commander directed thus, with swift-changing finger-touches, such a colossal force as moved now behind my flag-ship, responding swiftly to every touch upon the keys before me. As I stood alone there in the little pilot room, save for Jhul Din at the controls, the tremendous responsibility that was mine seemed weighing down upon me tangibly, crushing me, but I gripped myself, peered tensely ahead.
Smoothly still our great fleet shot through the void of darkness, and then upon the space-chart I saw our most advanced scout-ships creeping toward the advancing serpent-scouts and meeting them, touching them. At the same moment, in the darkness far ahead, there glowed out here and there long, pale shafts of misty white light, appearing and disappearing, hardly to be seen against the flaring suns of the galaxy beyond. All along a broad, thin line ahead those little beams of pale light were showing, like ghostly, questing fingers of death, and as they glowed and vanished there far ahead, soundlessly, the big Spican beside me twitched with eagerness.
"The scouts!" he exclaimed. "They've met—they're fighting!"
I nodded, without speaking, straining my gaze into the void ahead, where our scouting-ships and those of the serpent-fleet were, I knew, already whirling and stabbing at each other, while in toward them were moving the main masses of the two vast armadas. Hardly more than an inch's gap lay between those two fleets on the space-chart, now, and as I gazed ahead I saw the fighting scout-ships coming into view before us, a long, thin line of battle extending across the void before us and made up of gleaming oval serpent-craft and flat Andromedan ships, dipping and striking and soaring there before us. Fiercely those advance-ships of the two mighty fleets were grappling there, scores of them reeling aimlessly away as the pale beams swept them or crumpling suddenly up as the invisible but deadly force-shafts struck them. But I was looking beyond them, now, looking beyond them to where, between them and the galaxy's suns, a gigantic, far-flung swarm of shining light-points was rushing toward us.
"The serpent-fleet!" I whispered.
On it was coming toward us, even as we moved toward it, the long line of struggling, raging scout-ships between our advancing fleets. Swiftly it was changing from a swarm of innumerable light-points to a swarm of vaguely glimpsed shapes that grew larger, clearer, with every moment that they neared us, thousands upon tens of thousands of great oval ships, flashing toward us in a mighty rectangle! Toward it our own vast pyramid of ships was rushing in turn, and then the struggling scouts ahead had flashed back to rejoin their respective fleets, and with only empty space between them now the two titanic armadas were thundering toward each other! The Armageddon of our universes had begun!
Swiftly, as our vast fleet leapt forward through the void, my fingers were pressing the keys before me, and instantly our massed thousands of ships had shifted from their pyramidal formation into one of two long and mighty columns, racing forward side by side. Nearer the colossal rectangle of the serpent-fleet was rushing toward us—nearer with each instant, until it seemed that the two vast armadas must crash into each other and destroy each other. Bending tensely over my keys I saw their huge fleet looming before us, an enormous, close-massed swarm of great oval hulls rushing lightning-like toward us. Then, just before they reached us, I pressed a single key.
Instantly our two great racing columns of ships divided, one to the right, our own ship at its head, and one to the left, splitting from each other and flashing past the great mass of the serpent-fleet on each side! And as we thus flashed past there leapt from the cylinders of our ships toward the serpent-fleet between our columns countless deadly shafts of invisible force, shafts that in the instant that we flashed past had crumpled and smashed to twisted wrecks of metal a full three thousand or more of the great mass of the serpent-ships! From their fleet's edge the pale beams sprang out in answer to us, wiping the life from scores of our racing ships; but caught as they thus were between our flashing columns they could not loose those beams effectively, and in a moment we were past them. Then with the galaxy's suns before us our great fleet was halting, turning, its columns closing again together, while toward those distant suns were drifting all about us the crumpled wrecks of the serpent-ships that had fallen before us.
"First blood!" cried Jhul Din, and I nodded without speaking, bending again over my keys as our fleet raced forward again toward the enemy.
The serpent-fleet, too, had turned, and was moving cautiously back toward us, and I knew that not again could we execute upon them the maneuver which we had just used. As we rushed again upon them, though, their fleet racing again to meet us, my fingers pressed swiftly again on the keys and our long columns of ships shifted swiftly into another formation, a long wedge with our own flag-ship at its point. Just before we again raced into the serpent-ships our fleet assumed this formation, for it was my plan this time to tear by main force through the serpent-fleet, shattering it before us. But in the instant before we could do so, before our mighty wedge's point could crash into them, their own fleet had divided suddenly, some fifteen hundred ships from its center driving upward and far above us while the remaining gigantic mass drove down under and beneath us. And in the next moment I saw that five hundred of the fifteen hundred ships above were great disk-ships, and that they were glowing with sudden, flickering radiance!
"Attraction-ships!" Jhul Din was shouting, but already our own ships and all those behind us were turning upward, pulled resistlessly up, while from beneath with death-beams whirling thick the mass of the great serpent-fleet was leaping up toward us.
With the first sight of the attraction-ships, though—a sight which I had been expecting—I had pressed quickly on two of the keys before me, and at once the great line of scout-ships that had hung high above us and on each side during all the battle so far, awaiting this emergency, were gathering swiftly high above and then leaping toward the attraction-ships! Out toward them sprang the thousand serpent-craft that had risen with the attraction-ships to guard them, and then as they met our charging scouts there was a fierce, wild struggle high above us, a struggle that was a tiny replica of the gigantic combat that was going on below. For now, as we were pulled helplessly upward, the thousands upon tens of thousands of serpent-ships beneath were rushing up to attack us, undeterred by the crumpling shafts of force that shot down to meet them, charging up with death-beams sweeping through us in great shafts of ghostly light!
Swiftly, I saw, the crews of scores of ships about us were being annihilated by the whirling beams, that wiped all life from those ships, though still they drove unguided upward, pulled by the relentless grip of the attraction-ships high above. Down toward those glowing disk-ships were racing our gathered scouts but ever as they charged down the serpent-ships that guarded the attraction-craft leapt to meet them, fighting with blind courage to hold them back long enough to encompass the destruction of our main fleet below. Not for much longer could we continue in that deadly grip if we were to escape, I knew, since through ever more of our ships were sweeping the deadly beams from beneath!
Then I saw one of the scout-ships high above charge down through the opposing serpent-craft in a terrific, headlong plunge, saw it smash squarely down onto one of the hovering disk-ships, and then both had buckled and collapsed, were drifting away toward the galaxy in twisted wrecks of metal. And down in the same way were plunging others of the scout-ships, a deliberate and awful self-sacrifice of their Andromedan crews; diving down with all their terrific speed and tearing through the guarding serpent-ships to crash into and destroy the glowing attraction-ships that had gripped our main fleet. A moment more and the last of the attraction-ships and the last of the serpent-ships also had vanished above us, our scout-ships perishing almost to the last one, too. But they had saved us for the moment, since now, released from that deadly grip above, our fleet was massing and swooping down in turn upon the main body of the serpent-fleet beneath us, whose beams had been slicing through us!
Down—down—black gloom of space and blazing suns and whirling ships, all spun about me as our fleet rushed giddily down through the void toward the massed serpent-fleet beneath; then we were upon them, were shifting into a long, slender line of ships as my fingers on the keys flashed another signal, were driving in that line past them, raking them with all the force-shafts of our cylinders. But as we did so their own great mass of ships shifted swiftly into a similar long, slender column, and then they were racing through space beside us, two tremendously long lines of thousands upon thousands of ships, rushing through the void toward the galaxy, with pale death-beams and invisible force-shafts clashing and crossing from line to line as they flashed on!
For the moment, as the two fleets rushed thus side by side toward the galaxy's suns, so narrow was the gap between their flashing two lines that it seemed they must needs annihilate each other with their mighty weapons. Plainly visible in space beside us raced the line of the serpent-fleet, its beams stabbing thick toward our own ships, and in that wild moment ships behind and about our own were reeling unguided away by scores as the pale beams swept through them. Into one another and into untouched ships about them they crashed, whirling crazily in all directions; but in the same moments the deadly shafts from our own cylinders were leaping across the gap between the racing lines also, and serpent-ships all along their tremendous line were crumpling and collapsing, the racing ships behind them often crashing into those twisted wrecks before they could swerve aside from them. On—on—in a tremendous running fight the vast fleets leapt, a fight that was annihilating the ships of both fleets by scores and hundreds with each moment, but which neither of us would turn away from, hanging to each other and stabbing furiously with our beams and shafts toward each other as we raced madly on!
On—on—far ahead the galaxy's suns were flaming out in greater splendor each moment as at all our terrific utmost velocity our ships and the enemy ships beside us reeled on. Blazing, glorious, those suns filled the heavens before us, now. We had reeled sidewise in our first mad struggle and now the Cancer cluster lay to our left ahead, a stupendous ball of swarming stars at the galaxy's edge, while directly before us at that edge burned a great star of brilliant green, a mighty sun toward which at awful speed our two struggling, tremendous lines of ships were leaping. All about us still the ghostly beams were sweeping from the great lines of ships to our left, but swiftly the controls clicked beneath Jhul Din's grasp as he sent our ship racing forward on a corkscrew, twisting course, evading with miraculous swiftness and skill the deadly beams; while at the same time from beneath there came to our ears over the roaring drone of the generators the slap and clang of the great cylinders as our Andromedan crew shifted their aim, sending crumpling, devastating shafts of unseen force across the gap toward the serpent-ships!
But now ahead the great green sun toward which our long, strung-out fleets were flashing was growing to dazzling size and splendor as we neared it, neared the galaxy's edge. Like a giant globe of dazzling green fire it flamed before us, with all about and behind it the awful blaze of the galaxy's thundering suns, in toward which at terrific and unabated speed we were racing. Countless thousands upon thousands of ships, stretched far out in long lines there in space, we were reeling on at our utmost velocity of millions of light-speeds, stabbing and striking and falling in wild battle as we plunged madly on. Toward the right our two flashing lines of ships shifted, as we neared the giant green sun ahead, for now it was flaming across the firmament before us like a titanic wall of blinding emerald flame. Still farther to the right we veered, and then we had reached that sun and it was flaming in stupendous glory just to our left as we raced along its side!
"We're racing straight into the galaxy!" cried Jhul Din hoarsely as we thundered on. "It means death to carry this battle in there—our ships will crash into the suns and worlds at this terrific speed!"
"The serpent-ships will crash then too!" I screamed back to him, above the roar of the generators and the hissing of beams and force-shafts about us. "We'll carry this battle to a finish!"
Now as we sped past the giant green sun to the left, the line of serpent-ships between our own vast line and that sun, their ships were all but invisible to us against the blinding glare of that sun. Swiftly they took advantage of this, their pale beams leaping toward us with renewed fury, while in that dazzling glare our shafts of force could only be loosed upon them as we chanced to glimpse or guess their position. I saw ships in our line all about and behind us reeling away as the beams raked them, and then set my teeth, pressed a single one of the keys before me. At once all our great line of ships bore toward the left, against the line of the serpent-ships!
Toward them we slanted, even as we raced with them past the tremendous green sun, and then our line was pressing against their own, our ships colliding with theirs, oval ships and flat craft vanishing in great wrecks of metal as they crashed into each other, beams and force-shafts leaping thick from line to line as we bore inward against them. Involuntarily, though, their line gave beneath the terrific pressure of our own, veered to the left farther to escape that pressure, toward the great green sun. Then, as it veered too far, that which I had hoped for came to pass, for at the terrific speed at which they were moving that inward swerve took a full two thousand of their ships into the outward-leaping prominences of that sun. Into those gigantic, outrushing tongues of green flame they blundered, a tiny swarm of midges in comparison to them, and in the next instant had vanished, only a few tiny jets of fire from the prominences' sides marking their end. Then we were past the great sun, were flashing on and into the galaxy's thronging suns that lay thick in the heavens all about us.
The moments that followed live in my memory now as a mad time of insane, racing combat, of our two gigantic fleets, strung out still in their long lines, flashing inward into the galaxy and between its thundering suns at an unabated, awful speed, striking and soaring and falling with wild, unceasing fury as they plunged on. For now a score or more of great suns were looming close before us as we raced forward, crimson and white and yellow stars between which we reeled crazily and blindly as we grappled still in our vast running fight. Full before us a single one of them, a sun of brilliant white, was looming larger each instant as we sped toward it, and as we almost reached it the serpent-ships drove us inward toward it, striving to repeat our own maneuver, pressed us inward until its heat was terrific even through our insulated walls, until almost we were within the limits of the glowing, stupendous corona!
One or two of our inmost ships were already shriveling and perishing as they drove inward too far and plunged into that corona, but as they did so I had sent our long line heading outward again with a swift flash signal, crashing against the serpent-fleet's line with a mighty shock and forcing them outward as in hundreds their ships and ours perished by collisions and from the death-beams and force-shafts, as our line struck theirs. The next instant, though, as we forced them outward, passing the great white sun, there loomed swiftly before us the mighty, turning planets of that sun—great, far-swinging worlds through which our two vast fleets were flashing! Then all about us ships of our own fleet and of the serpent-fleet were crashing into those planets as we drove wildly on. One of them loomed swiftly before ourselves, a great turning world of whose mountains and gleaming seas I had a flashing glimpse, about which a swarm of little space-ships were thronging, like pigmies rushing to and fro as about and above them raged the colossal battle of giants. Then in the instant that I glimpsed it, as that world loomed lightning-like stupendous in size before us, we had flashed sidewise as Jhul Din shifted the controls and were past it!
Behind us our ships and the serpent-ships were crashing by hundreds, by thousands, into those turning planets as our two great fleets raged between and among them, at many millions of miles a second. Then we were through and past them, racing crazily on, soaring and stabbing at each other still, serpent-ships and Andromedan ships reeling away or crumpling and perishing as death-beams or force-shafts reached them. On—on—farther in among the galaxy's suns, a stupendous mass of great stars all about us that watched us like gigantic, flaming eyes as we reeled and ran and struck at each other's great fleet there between them. Away to the left one of the galaxy's mighty nebulæ stretched, a stupendous cloud of glowing gas, while far ahead and to the right the strange, mysterious flaming beauty of one of the giant comets was visible, driving itself between the stars but at a speed snail-like in comparison to ours. And there among them all, fiery suns and whirling worlds, vast nebulæ, and glowing comets, our two tremendous fleets were battling on!
On—on—it seemed unthinkable that any beings could live in that stupendous struggle, as we fought and flashed there past thundering suns and worlds, twisting, turning, swaying to avoid them. It seemed that we could but keep up our colossal battle until both fleets were destroyed there inside the galaxy. With a swiftness not of reason but of instinct I touched the keys before me, holding our fleet still to its long column-formation as we fought on, while beside me Jhul Din uttered low, fierce exclamations as he twisted our ship lightning-like to that side or this, his battle-hungry soul being glutted now for once; while, beneath, our gaseous Andromedan crew wielded the force-cylinders like mad beings, they and those in the thousands of ships behind me striking with all their force at their serpent-enemies, reeling here in mighty battle with them in a universe strange to both!
Above a great red sun our fleets were driving now, stabbing and striking still with all their force at each other's long, strung-out line of ships; then, as we rocketed out into more open space again, with other mighty flaming suns all about us, I had a flashing glimpse of a black point far ahead that stood out against one of those suns, a point that leapt lightning-like to greater size, to a tremendous dark, round bulk that was driving toward us even as our struggling line of ships flashed toward it. Then in the next fleeting instant I saw that it was a giant dark-star, one of the many that roved the galaxy, a colossal black and burned-out globe toward which our battling line of ships was racing and which was itself booming on through space toward us!
But a single instant did I glimpse that great dead sun before it was upon us, because of our terrific speed, and was looming gigantically before us! In that instant, though, I had seen our peril, seen the annihilation of our fleet that would come in another moment as we crashed into it, and my fingers had shot down upon the keys with lightning speed, our whole great line of ships swerving instantly to the right. As we did so the great line of serpent-ships swerved after us, shooting in pursuit as we seemed to give way before them, never glimpsing in their hot pursuit the thundering dark-star ahead. And as they swerved sidewise after us, just as we reached that dark-star, it was upon them, was crashing straight through their tremendous line of ships!
A full fifth of their vast, long line of ships that dead sun crashed through, as though through so many flies, annihilating in that instant thousands of their ships! Shattered by that awful blow, their fleet already depleted like ours by the fury of our great battle so far, the serpent-ships reeled back from us, while we leapt in turn toward them. But instead of racing on with us they were slowing, were halting, were massing together, were turning, gathered now in a compact mass, and were racing back—back toward the Cancer cluster, back toward the galaxy's edge!
"They're fleeing!" My cry was a great shout of triumph. "We've beaten them—they're fleeing before us!"
Jhul Din was shouting hoarsely too, now, as I swiftly pressed on the keys before me, our long line of ships massing instantly together in close pursuit-formation and then flashing after the fleeing serpent-fleet. Not many more ships than that fleet did our own number, even now, yet before us the thousands of serpent-ships, close-massed together like ourselves, were racing back toward the galaxy's edge at their utmost speed, between the suns and past the swinging worlds, on and on. Nearer and nearer with each moment, though, we were drawing toward them, swiftly overhauling them, until within moments more they were visible just ahead of us, fleeing still from before us as steadily we overtook them. Then, as we flashed there between the flaming, thundering suns, as we seemed about to overtake them entirely, to blast them with our crumpling shafts of force, I saw a full hundred of their ships drop behind the rest of their mass; a hundred great oval ships different from the rest in that the rear portion of their oval had been truncated, cut squarely off, presenting toward us on each a round, flat surface that suddenly shone with brilliant red light!
An abrupt instinct of danger flashed through me in that moment, and my hands flashed down to the keys, to signal to our great mass of ships to slow our pursuit. But in the moment that they did so the thing had happened. For as our close-massed fleet raced on, after those hundred red-glowing ships ahead that lay between us and the serpent-fleet, it was as though a gigantic hand had in the next moment grasped the compact mass of our ships and scattered them in all directions like a handful of sand, throwing Jhul Din and me to the floor as our ship was hurled blindly away with terrific force, scattering our compact-massed fleet in a single instant across all the heavens, for millions upon millions of miles! And as we were flung thus blindly outward I cried aloud.
"Those red-glowing serpent-ships!" I cried, "They've generated colossal ether-currents behind them as they fled on—ether-currents that have shattered our fleet!"
For I knew, even in that desperate instant, that that was the explanation. Those red-shining ships had been specially designed to project a great force into the ether behind them that would cause gigantic currents to whirl through that ether instantly, and the flight of the serpent-fleet had been feigned to give them a chance to use those ships! They had loosed the vast ether-currents behind them as they fled on before us, currents that had flung the ships of our fleet to all sides like a handful of toys as we raced into them! And now, with our ships scattered far across the heavens in all directions, our fleet shattered and disorganized and incapable of resistance, the massed thousands of serpent-ships ahead had turned and were racing back toward us!
Back they came, flashing in a close-massed formation still, gathered thousands of great ships speeding back upon our own ship and upon the few hundreds of our ships scattered directly about us. In an instant more they would reach us, and the death-beams of their mighty fleet would sweep us out of existence, would wipe out our few ships and proceed onward, annihilating the far-scattered ships of our great fleet before they could gather to resist! Motionless we hung there in space, in that instant, as they raced back toward us, the remnant of their mighty fleet looming vast before us, and I heard as through a great stillness the clang of the cylinders beneath as our Andromedans swung them forward, to die fighting to the last!
"It's the end, Dur Nal!" Jhul Din was shouting, and I turned to him, my eyes meeting his strangely, steadily, in that instant.
"The end for us—and for our universe," I said, softly. Then in the next instant the mighty serpent-fleet was looming gigantic above and ahead of us, was flashing down in one titanic swoop upon us!
But what was that? Midway in that swooping plunge the serpent-fleet had halted, had recoiled! In a daze we looked up toward it, about us, behind us—and then we were crying out in our excitement. For there from above and behind us was racing toward us a new, tremendous fleet of ships, ships that were not oval like the serpent-ships, or long and flat like our Andromedan craft, but were long and tapering and cigar-like, as the ships of the Interstellar Patrol had been! In a vast armada of tens of thousands they were sweeping out from the center of our galaxy, toward and over us at a speed equal to our greatest speed, and then from them narrow rays of dazzling red light were springing out, striking thick among the massed serpent-ships ahead, annihilating those they struck in bursts of blinding crimson light! And as I saw that I cried aloud again.
"They're our own galaxy's ships!" My great cry was like a trumpet-call of faith and hope in that mad moment. "They're the great fleet of ships the Council Chief said they'd build—and they're striking out now with us to save our universe!"
16. From Outside the Universe!
The moment that followed was one of action and combat on such a scale as to stun the senses. Even as the great fleet of our galaxy rushed forward upon the serpent-fleet that had recoiled before it, the far-scattered ships of our own great armada had had time to rush in toward me again, to mass behind me. Then, as my fingers flashed down on the signal-keys, our own Andromedan fleet and the mighty galaxy-fleet above us were leaping as one toward the serpent-ships! Before those ships had time to dodge us we were upon them, the galaxy-fleet flashing above them and our own beneath them, and as we flashed thus above and beneath them thousands of deadly force-shafts struck up toward the serpent-ships from beneath, while from above countless brilliant crimson rays burned down toward them.
It was a scene unimaginable, that, as the three great fleets crossed and clashed. Three titanic armadas, each of thousands of close-massed mighty ships, that whirled and struck and ran there in the space between the crowding stars, three far-distant universes coming at last to death-grips within one of those universes. Flashing beneath the serpent-fleet it seemed that in all the firmament above us was but a single vast mass of oval ships, and as our invisible force-shafts stabbed up in swift revenge toward those ships they were crumpling here and there, collapsing and falling, whirling away toward the nearest of the thundering suns about us, while other ships among and above them were flaring wildly in great explosions of crimson light and vanishing as the annihilating rays of the fleet of the Federated Suns struck down upon them from above.
Thousands of ships, I think, must have gone into annihilation in that first wild rush of the three fleets, for ships all about our own were reeling blindly away as the pale beams that whirled down from above swept through them. Upward and downward those ghostly beams were leaping thick, finding their mark in many of the ships of our two fleets, but it was the serpent-fleet that suffered most in that mad rush. Caught as they were between the deadly fires of both our fleets, though only in the moment that we flashed past, their ships had yet vanished by hundreds, by thousands, as force-shaft and red ray flashed and stabbed among them. I heard Jhul Din shouting with mad joy as we shot past them beneath, heard, too, the cries of our few followers among the Andromedan crew beneath and then we were past them, were pausing in space, as I pressed the keys of the fleet-control, and were turning to rush back for another blow.
Above us now the great galaxy-fleet was turning likewise, slanting down beside us, and then our two fleets were leaping together back toward the serpent-ships. They had courage, the beings in those ships, for though now the tables were turned and it was we who outnumbered them, they had turned, massed still closely together, and were racing forward to meet us. By this time our mighty battle had reeled sidewise toward one of the near-by suns, a great double yellow star that flamed to our left in growing, awful glory as we raced across the firmament toward it; but no thought did we give it in that wild moment, since ahead the serpent-fleet, forming suddenly into a long wedge, was racing toward us. On it came, heading straight toward our two fleets that flashed to meet it, and then just before it reached those fleets it veered swiftly sidewise, to pass by the side of our own fleet, raking us with its beams while our own ships should mask them from the rays of the galaxy-fleet.
In the instant that they had veered, though, I had seen their maneuver, had pressed lightning-like on the keys before me. Instantly our own great fleet shot sharply sidewise also, so far sidewise in that moment that instead of racing past us the serpent-fleet flashed between us and the galaxy-fleet. And again, as they ran the gauntlet of the terrible rays and force-shafts of our two fleets, their ships were crumpling and vanishing in flares of light, through all their mighty mass. Another such deadly blow and we would have shattered their fleet, I knew, and as the serpent-ships shot past us and beyond us, their own death-beams stabbing out sullenly still, our two great armadas were turning again, were wheeling and flashing back again for another great blow, while to our side the twin great golden suns toward which we were swaying were looming now in dazzling grandeur.
Backward, side by side, our two vast fleets shot once more, and before us the serpent-ships were whirling again upon us! Surely no such struggle to the death had any universe ever seen as this one, in which all of our three great fleets seemed intent only on grappling there until all were destroyed. On toward us the serpent-ships were flashing, all things before and about us bathed now in the dazzling glare of the stupendous yellow suns to our left; then, just as their great fleet had almost reached our own two fleets, racing forward to meet it, they had dipped, had dived sharply downward to pass beneath us. But in that same moment, with the same idea, I had pressed the keys before me and our own fleet, and the galaxy-fleet with us, had dipped down also, rushing forward; and then in the next wild instant our two great fleets and that of the serpent-creatures had collided, had crashed head on there in space!
I had only a blinding vision of those thousands of mighty ships rushing toward us, and we toward them, and then it seemed that in all the universe about us was nothing but colliding mighty shapes of metal, oval and cigar-like and long and flat, as our two massed fleets crashed into their own. How our own ship escaped, in the van of our fleet I can not guess, for space about us in that moment was but a single awful mass of shattered and shattering vessels. Crashing into each other head on, transformed in an instant from gleaming, leaping craft to mere twisted wrecks of metal, went the thousands of ships about us, perishing in thousands in that colossal shock. Before us there seemed only a single mass of great oval ships leaping toward us, serpent-pilots plainly visible for a flashing moment in their white-lit pilot rooms, and then our craft was twisting and swaying and ducking like a mad thing as Jhul Din shot it this way and that to avoid the ships before us.
Then, as the impetus of that mighty rush of the three fleets vanished with their awful crash together, they were hanging there, each fleet mixed and mingled now with the others in that wild, crashing moment, no longer three vast organized fleets but a single colossal mass of countless ships, struggling together, ship to ship, in one tremendous field of battle there between the suns. It was as though, in that moment, space about us had become suddenly peopled thick with struggling ships, before and ahead, to each side and above and below, striking at each other with red ray or pale beam of invisible force-shaft, whirling and crashing into each other with inconceivable fury.
Out of the mass before us a single serpent-ship was rushing head on toward us. As Jhul Din swerved our ship sharply up to avoid collision with it, its death-beam leapt toward us, but again we leapt sidewise and upward to avoid that beam and it shot past us and instantly wiped the life from one of the cigar-like galaxy-ships behind us. As it did so, though, our force-shafts were stabbing from their cylinders as our Andromedans beneath swiftly turned them, and then the ship ahead had crumpled and vanished; while across and above us shot other pale beams from beyond as another serpent-ship leapt to take its place.
Crash!—a mighty shock flung us sidewise as our craft reeled over, and we glimpsed a serpent-ship that had flashed down on us from above, grazing past us. Our force-shafts leapt from the cylinders toward it, missed it, and then as its death-beams whirled toward us in passing there burned past us from behind a brilliant red ray that touched it and destroyed it in a great burst of crimson light! Then in the next instant our cylinders were swinging toward a trio of close-ranked serpent-ships that were rushing toward us, one behind the other. The death-beams of the foremost leapt out, seared along the edge of our ship, but at the same moment that foremost ship had crumpled suddenly beneath our force-shafts, and before the two behind it could swerve they had crashed into that twisted wreck of metal and into each other. Then all three buckled, shattered hulks were drifting sidewise from the battle.
But now all about us an awful glare was growing, and as we whirled and struck there I looked up to see that our titanic mass of tens of thousands of struggling ships, whirling on with all their speed and striking with all their power at each other, were drifting blindly toward the two flaming yellow suns that loomed now in dazzling size and splendor just before us! Yet on, on we were whirling, stabbing, soaring and vanishing, locked still in the colossal death-grip of universes, on until all about and before us was nothing but thundering, blinding walls of flame as we reeled sidewise into those two great suns!
Even as we soared and struck there, our force-shafts stabbing in crumpling death toward the serpent-ships that leapt toward us, I saw that far away on each side the vast mass of struggling ships, extending as far as the eye could reach, was reeling sidewise with us, vanishing already by scores and by hundreds as they reeled into the out-leaping fiery prominences of the giant golden suns before us. Yet on and on we were whirling still, all organization and plan gone now, with the two thundering suns beside us like vast ramparts of blazing fire across all the heavens, into which we were moving. Then suddenly those ramparts were all about us, titanic walls of awful flame that seemed to enclose the great mass of our thousands of struggling ships, and as we dipped and struck and ran I saw that our great masses were reeling inbetweenthe two suns!
On we went, our gigantic mass of grappling craft staggering into that narrow gap between the great suns, with their awful roaring fires all about us, now. Hundreds after hundreds of ships on the edge of our struggling mass were vanishing in those fires as they reeled too far to the side, or were licked up by the mighty, outrushing prominences, only tiny spurts of flame marking their end. Yet still we whirled and smote at each other, there, until the walls of stupendous fire about us had dropped back, until we were reeling out from between the suns, staggering through them, and were swaying on into the space ahead of us, raging on between the galaxy's thundering suns in our colossal battle of giants.
Reeling thus onward in mad combat I saw for an instant that now among the suns before us there stretched the gigantic, glowing mass of the great nebula we had glimpsed to the left at the battle's beginning, a tremendous ocean of flaming gas there in the heavens toward which our vast field of struggling ships was swaying. I saw, too, that but a score of thousands of ships were left now of each of the three great mingled struggling fleets, and then all else left my mind as fiercely toward us swooped again a pair of the serpent-ships about us, one beneath and one above with their death-beams stabbing up and down toward us as they drove upon us!
At the instant they did so our cylinders had shot down crumpling death upon the uprushing ship beneath, and then, as the one above leapt down toward us before the shafts could be turned on it, Jhul Din whirled our craft up in a great leap, the sharp prow of our ship ripping through the rear end of that ship as though through paper, annihilating all in that ship as the awful cold of airless space rushed into it. An instant it hung there, all dead in it that instant, and then, before it could drive aimlessly away, a shaft of red rays stabbing out of the great mêlée behind us had touched it and destroyed it.
Now before us, as we reeled on in that terrific battle that seemed to us to have endured for ages, there was glowing a great mass of light in the heavens, the stupendous cloud of flaming gas that was the nebula ahead, glowing there among the galaxy's stars that seemed but tiny sparks beside it. Straight toward its flaming mass our ships were whirling, locked still in our awful grapple! For the moment I turned from it, though, as in the struggling mass beside us three serpent-ships flashed down upon a single galaxy-ship. Our force-shafts shot out and crumpled one of them even as it flashed down, while at the same instant the crimson rays of the attacked ship annihilated another. In the same moment, though, the death-beams of the third ship had leapt downward, had swept through the galaxy-ship from stem to stern, annihilating all life inside it and sending it crashing away into the mass of struggling craft about it, while the third serpent-ship leapt toward us. But at that moment, over the throb of our generators and the hiss of our force-shafts, there came to my ears a dull, tremendous roaring sound that drowned out all else, while about us at the same time, about all the ships of our onward-reeling mass, was flooding a vast sea of flaming gas, a fiery ocean into which we were whirling!
"The battle's going inside the nebula!" yelled Jhul Din, over the thunderous roar of flame about us.
"Hold our ship with the rest!" I shouted thickly back to him. "It's going to be fought to the end this time!"
Now all about us was a single titanic ocean of glowing gas, as our thousands of struggling ships reeled into the great nebula's raging fires. Through those fires we could make out dimly the shapes of the ships about us, whirling and battling on still in that hell of flame, the heat-resistant hulls of them all enabling them to withstand the comparatively low temperature of the nebula's sea of flame. On and on, striking, whirling, grappling, we raged, force-shafts and death-beams and crimson rays stabbing through the glowing gases that flooded between us, carrying death and destruction still from ship to struggling ship. For still ships were flaring crimson and vanishing, were staggering aimlessly away as the pale beams swept them, or were crumpling and collapsing as our force-shafts struck them, all life inside them annihilated as they collapsed by the inrushing sea of flame, now.
Our titanic battle had reached its height, its climax, I knew, and with the fierce, desperate fury born of that realization, our ships were leaping upon the serpent-craft. It was a battle out of nightmare, that awful struggle, a battle of the thousands of ships of three great universes that grappled with each other to the death there in that hell of thundering flame. Gaseous Andromedans in their long, flat ships, writhing serpent-creatures with their oval craft, strange, dissimilar shapes from the races of all the galaxy's suns in their great, cigar-like hulls—all swayed and smote and stabbed there together in that stupendous struggle, pale beam and red ray and unseen shaft of force whirling this way and that through the seas of raging fire through which we reeled. On and on we whirled, all thought of everything but the enemy ships before us gone as each of the thousands of ships struck out with all its powers for its races, its universe!
Swiftly now, rocking and grappling there in the nebula's glowing ocean, with flame above and below and on each side and all about us, ships around us were vanishing, crashing into each other blindly amid the roaring fires, taking deadly toll of each other with their mighty weapons. But ever more swiftly, assailed on all sides by our terrific attack, the serpent-ships were decreasing in number, and though our own craft whirled to death about us also I saw that rapidly the serpent-ships were being annihilated in scores and hundreds as with the fury of utter reckless single-mindedness we leapt upon them. Thousands by thousands their ships were vanishing, and though hardly a score of thousands of ships remained now of our two mighty fleets the serpent-ships had been reduced to a fourth of that number by our terrible attack!
Still upon them we sprang, there in the nebula's fires, our force-shafts and red rays whirling ceaselessly through the thundering flames about us toward them, though sullenly still their beams sprang to meet us. Through that inferno of flame, between and through the whirling ships about us, our own craft leapt, its cylinders still stabbing forth crumpling death to the oval ships about us, and then suddenly, in answer to some signal flashed among them, all those oval craft, those serpent-ships, had driven swiftly upward from the mighty battle, into the roaring fires above us. In those fires, while we too drove up through the flaming ocean in pursuit of them, they gathered for an instant, massing together, and then were flashing away, through the nebula's flaming sea and out of it into open space once more, flashing together back toward the galaxy's edge!
"The Cancer cluster!" Jhul Din was screaming, now. "They're in flight—they're heading back toward the cluster!"
But already I had pressed swiftly on the keys before me, and about us our ships were massing again, the galaxy-ships with us now; and then close-massed together we were racing outward, too, out of the mighty sea of flame about us, bursting out of the titanic nebula into the open spaces of the galaxy once more, its thronging suns all about us. Through those suns, back toward the galaxy's edge in swift flight, the five thousand remaining serpent-ships were flashing, the only surviving remnant of their vast fleet, that our two armadas had conquered and all but destroyed. Back toward the Cancer cluster they were fleeing, upon whose thronging worlds all the hordes of the serpent-races were massed, and within which those hordes, we knew, would be laboring still to complete the great cone that now we could destroy. So on after them our own fleet leapt, a score of thousands of mighty ships in close formation thundering after our flying enemy.
Past mighty, flaming suns we were racing, in pursuit, past slow-turning great worlds that moved about those suns and that we raced between and past, through the galaxy's giant stars toward its edge, toward the Cancer cluster. On—on—after the fleeing serpent-craft we raced, until far before us through the crowding suns there came into view the great cluster toward which they were heading, a gigantic, globular swarm of suns there at the galaxy's edge. The serpent-ships had reached it, now, were dropping swiftly down toward it, and as we too flashed above it we dropped after them in hot pursuit. Down—down—the great ball of flaming suns was growing swiftly in size as we neared it, the countless thronging worlds between those suns, packed now with the serpent-races, visible beneath—down—down—and then suddenly, in obedience to some unseen order, the serpent-ships fleeing downward beneath us had halted, had turned, and then were driving straight back up toward us!
So utterly unlooked for was that swift, fierce attack that before we could swerve aside our downward-rushing thousands of craft had crashed straight into the uprushing serpent-ships. Then the moment after that wild shock in which hundreds, thousands of ships had smashed head-on together, there was battle again there above that mighty ball of suns, with the giant splendor of our galaxy to one side and the infinite vault of outer space to the other, a battle such as in sheer, concentrated intensity none of us had ever yet experienced. Like senseless mechanisms, with the mad energy of despair, the serpent-ships drove toward us, flinging away their lives to hold us longer from the great cluster beneath and its crowded, serpent-peopled worlds, throwing themselves upon us with such awful fierceness that, outnumbering them as we did, our fleet reeled and staggered there beneath their blows.
Our ships were falling by the hundreds each moment, but now we gripped ourselves, sprang upon the attacking serpent-ships with a fury that matched their own, summoning all the strength of despair ourselves as the vast battle hung thus in the balance, ourselves leaping down upon the serpent-ships with a suicidal recklessness that sent them into annihilation swiftly beneath us. For a single wild moment, it seemed, their ships and ours alike had gathered their utmost powers for one last supreme effort, were throwing themselves upon each other with a last mad burst of strength, and in that moment death-beam and red ray and unseen force-shafts flashed thick through space from ship to ship. Then the serpent-ships were thinning in number before us, fewer and fewer, as regardless of our losses we pressed our fierce attack, until at last but a scant score of them remained, a score that in the next moment were gone also, flaring crimson or crumpling and collapsing. A battered remnant of what had once been two tremendous fleets, but ten thousand ships left of all our countless thousands, we hung there in space above the cluster—alone! The serpent-ships were gone at last! The serpent-fleet was no more!
"We've won!" My cry of triumph was taken up and repeated, by Jhul Din beside me, by our followers beneath, by all, I knew, in our ships about us as we hung there. We had won! Had annihilated to the last one the countless serpent-ships, there in awful battle, reeling with them out of the outer void and through the galaxy, through thundering suns and whirling worlds, past dark-star and comet, through the mighty flames of the great nebula! Had swept the last of their fleet from space and now were moving down toward the great cluster beneath, toward the thronging suns and countless worlds among them, where all the hordes of the serpent-races were massed, dropping down to destroy the last mighty mechanism with which they had sought to conquer and annihilate us! We had——