Chapter V: Part 5

Nearer they came, and then from their glowing ships toward our own stabbed the pale death-beams, sweeping about us as we flashed on, a shining mark. As they did so, though, our own red shafts burned out swiftly, two of those attacking ships flaring to nothingness beneath them, while with a swift turn to the left Korus Kan had avoided the pale beams. That turn, though, took us now every moment outward once more from the radio-active region's center, forcing us out once more into clear space where the serpent-ships could annihilate us without danger to themselves. Out and out we flashed, and though our ship and all in it still glowed with the fluorescent light, that glow was waning, and the clang of falling metal from beneath, from the ship's disintegrating sides had ceased. Out--out--the score of ships to our right joining with the greater mass behind us again, and all drawing closer toward us, until the tingling nausea that had filled us had vanished, the glowing light of our ships and theirs vanishing likewise. Then, in one great mass, they were leaping again upon us.

Our lives at last within their grasp, they flashed after us and toward us, and I knew that an instant more would see them about us, their death-beams striking at us from all around as they encircled us. I gazed ahead for a moment, to where the giant universe of Andromeda stretched like a great rampart of burning suns across the black, cold heavens, still hours away from us, and then gazed back to where the close-massed hundreds of serpent-ships leapt after and upon us, the death-beam tubes in their sides already swinging toward us. Then in me, at that instant of onrushing doom, there flamed up a strange, wild rage, a fierce, utter fury that had grown in me during all the struggles and flights that had been ours since first we had met these serpent-creatures. I wheeled around to Jhul Din and Korus Kan, my anger breaking from me in a fiery shout.

"Turn the ship square around and halt, Korus Kan!" I cried. "We of the Interstellar Patrol are not going to be picked off as we run--we're going to turn and face them head-on!"

Korus Kan's eyes flamed at my cry, his hands moved swiftly on the controls, and then our ship had curved suddenly about and had slowed and stopped, swinging around and hanging motionless in space, facing our enemies. Even as we had curved and stopped, they too had swiftly halted, as though suspicious for the moment of some trap, and hung before us in the black gulf of space, facing us. Then there was an instant of utter stillness and silence, as there in the void we faced them, our ship motionless in space, we three in the pilot room gazing toward their own great swarm of ships hanging motionless before us; the mighty Andromeda universe flaming in the heavens behind us, now, and the far, dim glow of the dying serpent-universe in the blackness ahead, and the misty little circle of light that was our own galaxy away to the right; all these lay about us in a silence that was the silence of doom. For a single moment the great tableau held, and then, disdaining to use their attraction-ships upon us now, the great swarm of serpent-ships leapt as one toward us, their hundreds of death-beams stabbing toward us!

But as they did so, as they sprang upon us there in space, there leapt from above and _behind_ us a mighty swarm of other ships--long, slender, flat, gleaming ships entirely different from the oval-shaped serpent-craft, or even from the cigar-like ships of our own galaxy--long, flat ships like none we had ever seen before, that flashed down over and past us straight upon the serpent-fleet! From the sides of these strange new ships there projected thick, squat cylinders that were pointed now toward the serpent-ships before us, and though no ray or beam could be seen issuing from those cylinders, the serpent-ships at which they were aimed were crumpling, were contracting and folding up into shapeless masses of crumpled metal, as though crushed in the grasp of a giant hand! And as that mighty swarm of strange, flat ships flashed down upon the serpent-fleet that reeled back and recoiled from its terrific blows, I heard a wild cry from Korus Kan, as he and Jhul Din stared out with me.

"Strange ships attacking our pursuers!" he cried. "They're ships that have come out from the Andromeda universe to save us from the serpent-creatures' pursuit!"

_11. Into the Andromeda Universe_

As the mighty swarm of Andromeda ships from behind us drove down upon the half-thousand serpent-craft ahead, I could only stare for a moment in stupefied surprize, so stunning had been our sudden transition from death to deliverance. I saw the long, flat craft of the Andromedans, a full thousand in number, flashing down on the serpent-ships in one great swoop, saw the latter, in groups, in dozens, in scores, crumpling and constricting as the deadly cylinders of the Andromedan ships were turned toward them. Within an instant, it seemed, a full two hundred of the half-thousand serpent-ships had crumpled and whirled away beneath the terrible, invisible force of the cylinders, though death-beams were raging out thickly all about the swooping Andromedan ships. Then, with almost half their fleet wiped out, the remaining three hundred serpent-ships, including their score of great disk-attraction-ships, had whirled around and were racing back into space toward their own dying universe, fleeing from the terrific blows of the attacking ships that had come out from the Andromeda universe ahead, just in time to save us.

Now, as the serpent-fleet flashed from sight, into the void toward its own universe, the thousand Andromedan ships massed swiftly and moved toward our own, that hung still motionless there in the gulf of space. In tense silence we watched them come, hoping that they might not set us down, too, as enemies because of our serpent-ship, but they turned none of their deadly cylinders toward us. Those cylinders, as I was later to learn, were in reality projectors that shot forth a shaft of invisible force, one that caused the ether about any ship it struck to compress about that ship instantly with terrific force, compressing thus into small compass the ether-vibrations that were the matter of the ship, and thus crumpling that matter itself, in an instant. It was a weapon fully as terrible as the crimson destruction-rays of our galaxy's ships or the pale death-beams of the serpent-creatures, a shaft of crumpling force that we knew could destroy us instantly. Instead of loosing it upon us, though, they slanted down until one of their foremost ships was hanging just above our own.

We guessed then that they meant to enter our ship, and in a moment our guess was confirmed as the long, flat ship hovering above sank downward until its lower surface was lying along the upper surface of our own oval craft, the two touching. Then we heard a section of the underside of the ship above sliding back, and a moment later, at my order, one of our crew slid open our own upper space-door. The openings in the two ships, in the upper side of ours and the lower side of theirs, were thus together, pressed so closely by the weight of the upper ship as it pressed down upon us that it formed a hermetically sealed opening connecting the two. Then, down through that opening from the ship above, down into the corridor of our ship and toward our pilot room, there came a half-dozen of the Andromedans from the ship above us, a half-dozen of the people of the Andromeda universe.

I do not know what weird and alien shapes we had expected to see in these beings of a different universe, but I do know that never had our imaginations envisaged creatures of so utterly strange a nature as these that came toward us now. For they were _gaseous_! Tall columns of misty green gas, that held always to the same pillar-like outline, as unchanging of form as though of solid flesh, and that were gliding along the corridor toward us! Upright, unchanging columns of green, opaque vapor, from near the top of whose six feet of height there branched out on each side a smaller arm of the same thick green gas, arms that they moved at will, and in which some of them held instruments and weapons! Tall, erect columns of thick, green vapor, without features of any kind that we could see, that yet were living, intelligent and powerful beings like ourselves! Their bodies, their two arms, their very organs and features and senses formed of gas, just as our bodies are solid, and that of a jellyfish liquid!

Down the corridor they came toward us, gliding smoothly forward, halting just before us and surveying us, I knew, by whatever strange sense of sight was within their gaseous bodies. Dumbly we stared toward them, for the first time now wholly appreciating the immense difference between us and them; then, at a loss for another gesture, I held out my hand toward the foremost of them. Instantly his own arm came out toward me, gripped my hand with a grip as solid as though that arm had been of flesh instead of gas, a grasp that though cold was real and tangible. When the one before me had withdrawn his grasp, then I spoke aloud to him, but there came no reply. Instead the Andromedan extended toward me, in the grasp of his other arm, a small globe of what seemed misty glass, a few inches in diameter and mounted upon a little metal base. As he held it, though, pressing a tiny button in the base, the misty globe suddenly glowed with light, and then in it I could see figures moving, as though in some tiny cinema-screen.

The scene in it was that of a great, gleaming-walled room, utterly strange in appearance, with a mass of shining, unfamiliar apparatus grouped about it, among which moved a dozen or more Andromedans like those before me, upright columns of green gas gliding to and fro, inspecting and tending the different mechanisms. Then all of them grouped about a single one, a vast tube that I sensed was a great telescope, which pointed out into the blackness of space, and down from which there fell upon a broad white surface a swift-moving picture, one of a single oval space-ship rushing through the void, with Korus Kan, Jhul Din and myself visible in its white-lit pilot room, while not far behind it there raced in pursuit of it a great swarm of serpent-manned ships. Then the Andromedans grouped about that great telescope were seen moving swiftly over to an apparatus at the room's center, apparently one of communication; and the next moment the whole scene had vanished, and was replaced by one of a thousand long, flat ships--Andromedan ships--slanting swiftly upward from a great world and into space. Then that, too, had clicked off; there was a flashing scene of those same thousand ships leaping upon our pursuers as they had done but a moment before; then all light in the little instrument had vanished as the Andromedan before me snapped off its control button.

* * * * *

A moment we remained in silence, puzzled, until Korus Kan broke the stillness with an exclamation. "It's a communication instrument, Dur Nal," he exclaimed, "one that shows in visible pictures the thoughts of whoever it is connected to--it's their method of communication with each other, apparently."

I nodded now, with sudden understanding. "Then that's the way that they discovered our peril--came to save us!" I said. "That's what they're telling us!"

But now the Andromedan had held the little instrument forward to me, and as I took it, in some perplexity, he silently indicated two little round metal plates inset on its bottom, which he had grasped when holding the thing and which I now grasped in turn, pressing the tiny control button as I did so. The next instant a current of thrilling force seemed racing up my arms, through my brain, and in the little glowing sphere appeared only a confusion of vague forms. Then, as my brain cleared, I concentrated my thoughts on our mission and its reason; and at once, in the instrument's glowing sphere, there appeared clearly the five thousand serpent-ships attacking our universe, destroying our fleet by means of their death-beams and attraction-ships, settling upon the worlds and suns of the Cancer cluster. Then, with the shifting of my thoughts, there was a glimpse of our ship flashing out into the void from our own universe toward that of the Andromeda and then the little sphere had gone black as I snapped off the button that controlled it.

For the moment we could not know whether we had been fully understood by the beings before us, but the next instant one of them pointed with a gaseous limb toward the gathered suns of the Andromeda universe, flaring in the blackness ahead, and as we nodded and pointed also, they stepped over beside us. The next moment the opening in the under side of the ship above and the space-door in our own ship had clanged shut, and as the whole great fleet of ships about us began to move toward the Andromeda universe, Korus Kan opened up the power of our own generators, moving smoothly along among them. Within moments more, the strange, gaseous forms of the Andromedans standing there beside us, our ship and all those about it were flashing at full speed toward the great galaxy ahead.

From the ship's hull beneath I could hear an odd, grating sound, as of the clash of metal on metal, that continued to come to my ears as we flashed on, but in the moments, the hours that followed, I paid but small attention to it, engrossed as we all were in the magnificent spectacle of the universe ahead. Like a tremendous belt of suns across the black heavens it was, largening in vastness and brilliance with every moment that we flashed nearer, until by the time we had raced toward it for a half-score of hours it seemed to fill all the firmament before us with its hosts of flaming stars. We were flashing on in the same course as the ships about us, heading toward a spot where there shone two great yellow suns that were like twin wardens of this mighty universe. And as we hummed through the void toward them, sweeping in nearer to this great galaxy's edge, the ships about us and our own ship, too, had begun to slacken their tremendous speed, until at last at a reduced velocity we were driving in past the outmost suns of the Andromeda universe.

The dull grating sound from beneath was persisting, still, but now interest in all else had left me as there spread before and about me the wonders of this stupendous universe. A universe it was as large as our own, as large as the dying serpent-universe, but different from either. For if ours was a young universe, with the majority of our stars glowing with blue and white-hot youth, and the serpent-universe an aged and dying one, with burned-out and waning crimson suns, this one before us was a universe in its prime--a universe the vast majority of whose suns were flaming yellow with their greatest splendor, a golden galaxy of living stars infinitely different from the dim, dying universe from which we had just escaped, and infinitely different, too, from the giant, white young suns and raw, vast nebulæ of our own youthful universe.

As we sped in between those gathered, flaming suns, though, as we drove in past the edge of their great mass, my eyes began to take in their position and arrangement, and as they did so I saw that not alone in age or youthfulness was this universe different from any other I had seen. For as we flashed into the thronging suns, past a great group of them massed to our right, I saw that the suns of that group were gathered in a great circle, a score of mighty flaming suns, each set in position with mathematical exactness, forming a perfect circle as they hung here in space, one of the two great yellow suns I had glimpsed from afar having a place in that circle. And inside that mighty circle of suns I glimpsed a vast mass of swarming planets--hundreds, thousands even, of great, turning worlds that moved in regular orbits inside the great ring of suns about them, lit and warmed perpetually by their encircling fires.

Stupefied, stunned, by that tremendous sight, I did not, could not, for the moment understand the significance of what I was seeing. But as we flashed on past the great circle and its swarming enclosed planets, as we approached another close group of suns, I saw that it, too, was formed of a score or more of great suns grouped in a perfect circle like the first, and that inside that circle of suns there swung also hundreds and thousands of whirling worlds! And beyond it shone another mighty ring of suns, and another, and others, as far as the eye could reach, all the suns in all this tremendous universe being grouped by the score into great circles inside of which swung countless planets! And then, at last, there broke upon my reeling brain the meaning of what I was seeing.

"Suns in circles!" I cried, as I gazed out across that mighty vista. "They've done this themselves--consciously, deliberately! They've placed all the suns of their universe in great circle-groups, so that inside those circles their countless peoples can exist!"

For I saw, now, that it was so, that only by intelligent design could the countless swarms of thronging suns about us ever have been placed in these mathematically perfect circles, inside which their great planets swung. Long ago their universe must have been much like our own, a great chaos of suns reeling blindly in all directions, swarming like a vast hive of stars, each with its own few planets moving about it. But as their numbers had increased, as they had come to need every world, every planet for their existence, they had grasped their suns with titanic, unguessable forces, had swung them from their accustomed chaos into order, into great circles, placing inside those circles all their countless worlds--worlds of which thousands could then exist upon the light and heat of a mere score of suns by having those suns grouped in a ring about them.

Now, driving in past great circle after circle of flaming suns, past the countless planets that moved inside those circles, we were flashing on with the ships about us toward the center of this strange and mighty universe. On our space-chart I could see that thick about us were great masses of interstellar traffic, which cleared away before us as we drove inward. Circle after circle of fiery suns we were leaving behind, mass upon mass of swarming planets inside, but never on our space-charts showed any wandering dark-stars, or meteor-swarms, or vagabond, sunless worlds, all matter in this universe apparently having been swept up by the Andromedans and used as habitations for their races, inside the great sun-circles. A gigantic mass of perfectly grouped stars they stretched about us, those sun-circles, filling the heavens about us; but now, far ahead, there shone out ever more brilliant at the center of this great universe another great circle of suns, that seemed the largest in all this universe. A score of titanic, flaming stars, they hung there at this galaxy's center, and it was toward these that our racing ships were heading.

Toward them we gazed with intense interest as our ships fled on, but suddenly were startled back to realization of our immediate surroundings by a great rumbling and grating from beneath, our ship swaying to one side and heeling sickeningly over, even as it flashed ahead. In sudden tense silence we stood, listening to that rumbling and cracking beneath, and then up from the speech-tube beside me there came a startled cry from one of our crew below.

"The ship's splitting!" he cried. "The walls have been grating and giving ever since we ran through that radio-active disintegrating-region--and now the ship's beginning to break in two!"

There was an instant of silence in the pilot room, the only sound that fearful grating rumble from beneath as gradually the ship's walls, weakened and crumbled by the disintegrating vibrations of the radio-active region through which we had plunged, began at last to split. A moment more, we knew, would see our ship riven apart there in space, with instant annihilation the fate of all of us. Silent, stunned, for a moment we stood there, the Andromedans beside us comprehending the situation as well as ourselves; then I whirled around to Korus Kan, flung my arm up toward the great central sun-circle that lay now full ahead, nearest of all the sun-groups to our onward-racing ships.

"Full speed!" I cried to him. "There's a chance still that we can get to those suns and worlds before the ship breaks up!"

With that cry the Antarian flung open the power-control, and instantly our ship, rumbling and groaning still as its walls gave about us, plunged on at utmost speed. I knew that we had perhaps a chance in a thousand to reach the worlds inside that sun-circle before our craft broke beneath our feet, but it was our only chance, and as we reeled on now with the generators roaring their greatest power, and with a thunderous, cracking roar rising from beneath also as our walls parted, it was with the consciousness that the next few moments would seal our fate. The great fleet of Andromedan ships about us had leapt forward with us, were behind and about us, but for the moment all our attention was centered upon the great circle of suns ahead, largening before us swiftly as with one last great burst of speed our ship shot through the void toward it.

Our ship swayed blindly over, now, even as it reeled on through space, another great crash of riven metal coming to our ears from beneath, the floor slanting steeply up beneath us. Flung against the wall as we were, though, Korus Kan clung still to the controls, heading our swaying flying ship straight on toward the sun-circle, until in a moment more we had reached that circle, were slanting downward at the same terrific speed above that great ring of mighty suns. Inside that vast circle there moved a mighty swarm of thronging worlds, as in the other sun-circles, but at the very center of this vast swarm of planets there hung motionless a single gigantic planet, largest by far of all in this universe, a huge central world down toward which our own crazily swaying ship and the ships about us were slanting!

Down--down--there was a sudden rush of air about our ship as we shot toward the surface of the great planet, and I had a flashing glimpse of that surface, scores of miles beneath, through our window--a smooth, park-like surface swarming with hordes of the gaseous Andromedans and with ascending and descending ships, a surface in which I seemed to glimpse innumerable round, well-like openings, but upon which I could see no buildings. Abruptly, though, even as I glanced downward, there came a tremendous final cracking from our ship's center, each end tipped sharply down from that center as the crumbling craft broke cleanly in half, and then the two wrecked halves of it were whirling down toward the surface of the great world far below!

_12. The Council Decides_

Of the moment following, while we rushed thus down to death, flung into a corner of the pilot room by the ship's splitting, I remember most clearly the rush of cold air that shrieked through our falling half. Had our ship broken in empty space instead of in the air of that great world's atmosphere, we would have met instant annihilation; since even the gaseous Andromedans, as I was later to find, could not live save in air, like ourselves, their gaseous bodies disintegrating in any other element. For the moment, though, as we flashed down toward the surface of the world beneath, it seemed that death for us had been delayed but a moment. We were whirled crazily around as our wrecked half of the ship fell, and through the window I had a glimpse of the ground beneath, rushing up to meet us with appalling speed. I tensed for the crash, and for death, as it leapt up toward us--nearer--nearer----

There was a hoarse cry from Jhul Din, and I glimpsed in the next instant a dark, great shape that swooped down past and beneath us from above. The next instant, just as I waited for the annihilating impact with the ground, there was a slight jar, a clang of metal against metal from beneath, and then swiftly, miraculously, our wild fall was slackening. In another moment the ground was just beneath us, and smoothly and slowly we sank downward, coming to rest upon it without a jar! I staggered up to the window, gazing forth, stunned by that sudden escape from inescapable annihilation, and then saw the explanation of it. Our half of the wrecked ship was resting upon the back of one of the great, flat Andromedan ships, that had flashed down under it and caught it upon itself, bearing us down to the ground and saving us from the crash and from death!

A moment more and we were stumbling out of the pilot room, down to the ground from the Andromedan ship on which we rested. As we reached it I saw that the other falling half of our ship had been saved in the same way by another Andromedan craft, lying close beside us on that craft with the members of our crew in it pouring out to join us. Another instant and they stood with us, a vast mass of the gliding, gaseous Andromedans that swarmed on this world's surface having collected about us, a strange, silent horde that I knew were contemplating us with their alien sense of sight. Quickly toward us, though, came the half-dozen Andromedans who had been with us in the ship and had escaped with us, leading us now through the throngs of gaseous figures about us toward some destination of their own.

As we moved along with them, though, our interest was not so much in our destination as in the stupendous and unparalleled scene about us. Far away to the distant horizons stretched the smooth surface of this great world, covered with an even growth of jet-black sod that gave it an extraordinarily park-like appearance, with here and there tall, spiked growths or plants of the same ebon black. That blackness, as I guessed, was due to the perpetual, fierce light of the great ring of suns that belted the firmament overhead, the circle of suns at whose center this mighty planet hung, and whose ceaseless light would naturally give to this world's vegetation a pigmentation of deepest black. The belt of giant suns above, the countless swarms of Andromedans about us, like gliding pillars of misty green gas, the ebon vegetation, the masses of mighty ships that rose and descended ceaselessly in the broad areas set aside for them--all these held us silent with the silence of awe, as with our guides we moved on.

It was none of these things, though, wonderful as they were, that intrigued me most of all about us--it was the total absence of buildings, of visible structures or habitations, on all the surface of this world. The smooth black sod, the countless Andromedan throngs, the departing and arriving ships--these were all that were visible about us, all except a great number of round, well-like shafts that opened in the ground everywhere about us. These shafts were some six feet across, and were placed always in pairs, or groups of two, and as I gave them more attention I saw, in a moment, that they held the answer to the absence of all buildings about us. For into them and out of them the gaseous Andromedans were moving in ceaseless streams, moving straight into one empty shaft and sinking smoothly downward out of sight, upheld by some force at the shaft's bottom beneath that nullified gravity just enough to make it possible for them to float gently down. From the other shaft of the pair, too, other Andromedans would be rising smoothly upward through the air, reaching the surface and gliding away, that other ascending shaft having at its bottom a constant force sufficient not only to nullify completely the pull of gravity but to give all in the shaft a slight upward thrust.

Into these shafts, as we moved past them, I glanced down, and saw that far beneath they opened into brilliant-lit rooms and halls, some of great size. I understood, then, how they had come to be used, how the Andromedans, their vast hordes cramped upon the surface of their worlds, had removed all buildings from the surface and had sunk them deep in the ground itself, subterranean buildings that could be entered or left by the ascending and descending shafts, and that gave them all the surface of their worlds free for their ships and to move about on. In and out of the great buildings sunken in the ground beneath us were moving constant streams of Andromedans, up and down the shafts; and now we saw that before us lay a pair of such shafts much greater in size than all others we had seen, and the center of a great rush of traffic of the gaseous beings about us. It was toward these greater shafts that our Andromedan companions were leading us, the figures before us giving way as we approached.

A moment more and we stood at the edge of the descending shaft, the Andromedans beside us motioning toward it and moving over its edge, sinking smoothly downward. Hesitatingly I followed, stepped from the edge into the empty air of the shaft; but the next moment my fear left me, for instead of plunging down a dead weight, I and my companions who had followed me were sinking downward as gently as though gripped and upheld by unseen hands. Down we floated, through the great shaft bright-lit by the belted suns above, down until we were sinking down out of the shaft itself into a vast, white-lit hall that stretched away for a great distance in all directions from us, and down from the center of whose ceiling, where the two great shafts opened from above, we were sinking.

* * * * *

Smoothly we sank downward from the great hall's ceiling to its floor, landing upon a great disk inset in that floor beneath the descending shaft and glowing with dark purple light, the glowing force that combatted gravitation enough in the shaft above it to allow us to float gently down. For the moment, though, I paid not so much attention to it as to the strange, vast hall in which we now stood. Colossal in size and circular of shape, the mighty, white-lit room was as large or larger even than the great Council Hall of the Federated Suns, in our own universe, though it was far different in appearance. There were in it no ranks of seats, the smooth floor being divided by crossing black lines into thousands of squares of equal size, and in each of those squares there rested, motionless, one of the gaseous Andromedans, thousands upon thousands of them, like massed columns of thick green vapor, being grouped in the great room about us.

We stood ourselves on a section of the floor at the room's very center, raised a few feet above the rest of the floor, and except for the two purple-glowing disks beneath the ascension and descension shafts the only object upon this raised portion was a great globe of what seemed misty glass, exactly like the tiny one with which the Andromedans had first communicated with us, but of vastly greater size, being some dozen feet in diameter. Toward this, as we hesitated there at the center of that gigantic assemblage of strange, silent figures, there moved the leader of the Andromedans who had accompanied us. He grasped with his two gaseous arms the metal studs that projected out from the great globe's base, and at once the misty sphere glowed with inward light, while in it appeared the thousand Andromedan ships, flashing out into the void, rescuing us from the serpent-fleet, and bringing us back into their own universe, a swift succession of explanatory scenes.

This explanation completed, the Andromedan moved back from the great sphere and motioned me toward it. Slowly I stepped forward, sensing the gaze of the massed, silent thousands on me. I knew that it was the supreme moment of our mission, the moment for which we had battled our way through three universes, the chance to obtain from this great council of the Andromedans the help that might save our universe. I glanced back to the anxious faces of my friends, drew a long breath, and then grasped the two studs before me, concentrating all my thoughts on what I wished to express, as the big sphere above glowed with inward light again, the thrilling current from it rushing into my brain.

In the glowing globe now appeared our universe, a great galaxy of stars floating in space like their own. Swiftly, with shifting thoughts, I showed them its throngs of peopled worlds, the traffic that swept between its suns, the ordered life of its teeming, dissimilar races. Then as my thoughts shifted again they saw the first five thousand serpent-ships rushing in upon that galaxy, destroying all our fleet and settling upon the suns and worlds of the Cancer cluster, saw us fleeing inward and then turning to capture one of the serpent-ships by boarding it in mid-space. Then, briefly, the globe flashed forth the interior of our own great Council Hall, with our Council Chief exhibiting and explaining the records of the serpent-people which we had captured in their ship. In a swift flash I explained the meaning of those records, a flash that showed the serpent-people, masters of the suns and worlds of our own universe, sailing out with increased powers to attack the Andromeda universe, and as that flashing scene showed in the great globe I saw a silent stir of excitement run through the massed thousands about me.

In another moment, though, the globe's scene had shifted back to the Council Hall, with ourselves receiving our orders from the Council Chief, entering our captured serpent-ship and slanting up and outward, bursting past the patrolling serpent-ships, through the void of outer space, only to be captured by the other serpent-ships that had come out to meet us. Our flight then to the serpent-universe, our glimpse of the vast serpent-fleet being built, and the colossal death-beam cone, and the escape of Jhul Din appeared in swift succession. Then came our own strange captivity, our rescue by Jhul Din and escape outward from the serpent-universe through the great space-forts, and our pursuit and final rescue by the thousand Andromedan ships. Then, as our final plea, I showed the vast hordes of serpent-ships and their irresistible mighty death-beam cone sailing out from the dying universe toward our own, rushing upon our galaxy and wiping out all its races. The great globe then went dark, as I released my hold upon its studs and stepped back from it. Our mission was ended, and its success or failure lay in the hands of the massed Andromedans about us.

There was a moment of stillness, a moment in which, I knew, the fate of our universe and of all in it was being decided, a moment in which the silence of the mighty hall seemed thunderous to our strained nerves. Then I saw each of the thousands of Andromedans in the hall reach down toward two smaller metal studs that projected from the floor before each, and as the great globe beside me glowed again with light, I sensed quickly that upon it would be registered the decision of the majority of the great council about me, the method used by them in reaching and registering a decision. Tensely we watched the great glowing globe, and then in it appeared another scene.

It was a scene of countless ships, gleaming flat Andromedan ships, gathering from all the suns and worlds of their universe, upon the giant central world where we were now, tens of thousands of great ships that rose from that world, slanting up and outward. Among them were a hundred ships quite different from the rest, great hemispheres of gleaming metal that rose as smoothly and swiftly as the rest, domed side uppermost; and as though in explanation there flashed in the globe a swift picture of those same hundred domed craft hanging above great suns in the Andromeda universe, projecting down beside and around them great walls and sheaths of the dark-purple glowing force that neutralized gravity, so that those suns, screened from the pull of the suns on their right by a great wall of that glowing purple force, would move away to the left in answer to the pull of the suns there, or vice versa. These, I realized swiftly, were the great sun-swinging ships by means of which the Andromedans had placed their suns in ordered circles, and now in the globe with all the tens of thousands of ordinary flat Andromedan ships they were flashing out into space. Then came a brief scene of the whole vast Andromedan fleet flashing down out of space upon the dying universe, bursting through the opening in the great blue-force wall around it and attacking all the serpent-creatures' suns and worlds!

The next instant the globe had gone dark again, but I knew now what the decision of the council was, and I whirled around to my friends with excitement flaming up in me. "They're going to help us!" I cried. "They're going to mass all their great fleet and with it and their sun-swinging ships sail to attack the serpent-universe!"

I can not remember now the moments that followed that momentous decision, so overwhelming to us then was the consciousness that we had succeeded in our mission, had dared the awful void and the perils of three universes and had procured the help that might save our galaxy. I remember being led by our Andromedan guides into and through other rooms off the great hall; of the thousands of gaseous figures of the council crowding up the shaft toward the surface above, to speed to every quarter of their universe and summon all their fighting-ships; of Jhul Din noisy with exultation and Korus Kan quiet as ever, but with gleaming eyes. Then all about me seemed dissolving and darkening as the utter fatigue of our strenuous last hours overcame me, a fatigue through which only my knowledge of our mission's importance had so far borne me, and beneath which now I sank into dreamless sleep.

* * * * *

When I awoke I sensed that hours had passed, though Jhul Din and our followers lay still unconscious about me. Leaving them there, I strode out of the room and into the great Council Hall, whose stupendous circle lay empty now and bare, seeming immeasurably more vast in its white-lit emptiness than when filled with the thousands of gaseous Andromedans. I moved across it to the raised section at the center, stepped upon the purple-glowing disk beneath the ascending shaft, and then, thrust upward by the force of that disk, was moving smoothly toward the round opening in that ceiling and on up the shaft until I had burst out into the unceasing light of the belt of suns above, stepping sidewise onto the ground as I did so. And now I saw that Korus Kan, not a dozen feet away, had turned and was coming toward me.

"Their ships are gathering, Dur Nal!" he exclaimed, eyes alight. "You've slept for nearly a day, there below, and their ships have been coming in those hours from every sun and world in their universe!"

I swept my gaze about, a certain awe filling me as I saw now the tremendous forces that had gathered and were gathering here on the surface of this giant central world. A tremendous circular area of miles in diameter around us, around the shafts that led down to the hall of the council, had been cleared of all else and was now a single vast gathering-point for the thousands of ships that were massing here. Even while we gazed, the air above was being darkened by the swarms of those ships that shot ceaselessly downward, landing in this great circular area, drawing up in regular rows and masses. In tens of thousands they were grouped about us, a tremendous plain of gleaming metal ships that stretched as far as the eye could reach.

At the center of this vast plain of ships, though, there lay a round clearing, in which we ourselves stood, a clearing in which there rested only a hundred other ships, different far from the thousands around them, a hundred domed, gleaming craft like giant hemispheres of metal. Not a thousand feet from us lay these great, strange craft, their space-doors open and their Andromedan crews busy among the masses of strange mechanisms inside, and I recognized them instantly as the great craft I had seen in the thought-pictures in the Council Hall below, the mighty ships whose projected sheaths and walls of dark-purple force could move giant suns at will.

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

"Yes," he said, "they'll be the most powerful weapons of the whole great fleet--with them we can crash the suns and worlds of the serpent-universe together at will."

Now, though, we turned our attention from them to the tens of thousands of ships that lay about us. In and out of those ships, too, were moving countless masses of Andromedans, swift-gliding gaseous figures who were inspecting and testing the mechanisms of their craft and the cylinders in their sides that shot forth the crumpling shafts of force. They were making all ready for our start, we knew, for the battle that must ensue when we poured down on the serpent-universe, and we strode over toward them. Already we had learned that the controls and mechanisms of the Andromedan ships were much like those of the serpent-ships, their speed being fully as great, but some features of them were still strange to me. A dozen steps only we took toward them, though, and then stopped short.

For down out of the sunlight above was slanting toward us a close-massed swarm of ships that seemed different from the masses of ships that were landing ceaselessly about us, that moved more slowly, more deliberately. Down it came while we watched it, standing there, seeing it change from a far swarm of black dots in the sunlight above to a mass of long dark shapes, that were becoming clearer to our eyes each moment--shapes that, I saw with a sudden great leap of my heart, were not long and flat, but oval!

"_They're serpent-ships!_" Korus Kan's great cry stabbed like a sword-blade of sound toward me. "They're the serpent-ships that pursued us to this universe--the three hundred that escaped when we were rescued--they've seen this great fleet gathering and have come to strike a blow at it!"

Serpent-ships! My mind was racing with superhuman speed in that instant as they drove down toward us, and I saw that the Antarian was right, that these were the three hundred that had escaped when we were rescued by the Andromedans, and that we thought had fled back to their own universe. Instead they had turned and followed us, knowing that we meant to gather forces to attack their universe, had flashed into the Andromeda universe toward this central world, unseen among the swarms of other ships that were gathering here, and now were swooping down with their score of great disk attraction-ships lowermost, driving down toward us in a fierce, reckless attack! In a single instant it all flashed plain in my mind, and then Korus Kan and I had whirled around, and he was racing back toward the hundred domed sun-swinging ships behind us.

"I'll warn these hundred ships!" he yelled, as I turned too and raced toward the nearest of the thousands of fighting-ships about us.

Even as I ran toward those thousands of ships, though, their Andromedan crews still unaware of their peril, I saw the massed serpent-ships above slanting straight down toward the hundred domed craft behind me, their attraction-ships hanging motionless above those craft for a moment. I had reached the Andromedan fighting-ships, now, and as the crews of the nearest glided forth to meet me I cried out, pointing upward. They saw the serpent-ships swooping down from above, and then were throwing themselves into their own ships. I raced into one with them, up to the pilot room set near the stem on its long flat upper surface. The Andromedans beside me flung back the controls, then, and our ship and the ships about us were leaping up like light toward the down-rushing serpent-ships.

At the same moment I saw Korus Kan racing into one of the domed sun-swinging ships above which hovered the score of attraction-ships, saw the doors of those domed ships clanging shut as they prepared to escape from the menace above, since they could project their mighty purple force downward only, and would thus be helpless if caught in the attraction-grip of the disk-ships above. A moment more and those hundred domed craft, the most powerful weapon of the great Andromedan fleet, would be safe, I knew. But in that moment, as the three hundred serpent fighting-ships dashed down toward us, I saw the score of hovering attraction-ships glow suddenly with flickering light; the hundred sun-swinging ships beneath were pulled smoothly upward by that tremendous attractive force; and then the attraction-ships, grasping the hundred domed craft that were the heart of our fleet, were racing straight up and outward into space!

_13. The Sailing of the Fleet_

As that score of glowing disk-ships, with our own hundred sun-swinging craft in their grip, flashed up and out of sight, our fighting-ships were flashing upward with the three hundred fighting-ships of the serpent-creatures racing down to meet us. Then, before we could swerve aside from their mad downward charge to pursue the attraction-ships, they had met us, and in all the world about us there was nothing for the moment but crashing and striking ships. Even as they had flashed down upon us, and we up to meet them, the invisible shafts of force from our cylinders had stabbed up and crossed their downward-reaching death-beams, so that scores of their own ships had crumpled and collapsed in the instant before we met them, scores of ours in turn driving crazily forward and sidewise as the pale beams wiped all life from them in that same moment. As we met them, though, it seemed that our ships and theirs were all to perish alike in crashes in mid-air, without further need of weapons, so terrific was the impact.

All about us in that moment I glimpsed ships smashing squarely into down-rushing serpent-ships, while our own craft spun and whirled as racing ships grazed along its sides. Then, hanging in the air there a scant mile above the ground, we whirled and grappled with the serpent-craft in a fierce, wild struggle. Their whole aim, we knew, was to keep us occupied long enough to permit the escape of their attraction-ships with our own sun-swinging craft in their grasp, while our object, in turn, was to brush aside these serpent-ships before us and race in pursuit of the attraction-ships. Charge and struggle as we might, though, in the moments following we could not break loose from the fury of the serpent-creatures' attack, who drove toward us with death-beams whirling in all the mad recklessness of despair.

I saw Andromedan ships all about us driving aimlessly away as those pale beams struck them, saw others destroyed by serpent-ships that crashed deliberately into them, and then pouring up from beneath came the masses of the great fleet beneath, thousands of ships that raced up and around the struggling serpent-ships, crumpling and destroying them with countless invisible shafts of force from their cylinders. Within another moment the last of the enemy craft had vanished, but by that time our own ship and a half-thousand others were flashing up in pursuit of the attraction-ships.

Up, up we raced--up until the giant world was but a tiny ball beneath, hanging at the center of the great ring of suns--but then we stopped, and hung motionless. For we were, we saw, too late. About us there stretched only the far-reaching circles of flaming suns that made up the Andromeda universe, with no sign of the attraction-ships or their prey. In those moments that the struggling serpent-craft had held us back, the attraction-ships had flashed out from this universe into the boundless gulf of space, with the hundred sun-swinging craft in their grasp, with Korus Kan himself in one of those ships. On none of our space-charts were they visible, safe from our pursuit out in the void, and we knew that somewhere in that void our sun-swinging craft and all in them were meeting their end, held in the relentless grasp of the attraction-ships and destroyed by them, since the sun-swinging craft could project their own terrific forces only downward. We were too late. Silently, slowly, we slanted back down toward the great central world.

As we came to rest there, among the tens of thousands of other gathered ships, I saw Jhul Din and our followers, aroused from beneath by the battle, running forward to meet me. I saw him glance about as he came toward me, inquiry in his glance, and then I shook my head.

"We've lost the most powerful weapon of the whole Andromedan fleet," I told him, slowly. "And we've lost, too, Korus Kan."

I think that in the hours that followed, while the last thousands of ships swept in from all quarters of the Andromeda universe to gather around us, it was the loss of our friend that lay heavier on the minds of both myself and the Spican than that of the hundred sun-swinging ships. Those hundred ships, we knew, would have enabled us to wreck all the serpent-universe, whereas now we must meet them ship to ship, and trust to courage and fighting-power alone to win for us. Yet even their loss seemed small to us beside that of the friend with whom we two had roved all the ways of our galaxy in the cruisers of the Interstellar Patrol, with whom we had dared across the void and through the serpent-universe and its perils, toward this Andromeda universe. Silent, though, we remained, watching the thousands of long, flat ships massing about us, and it was still in silence that I received from the Andromedan leaders the knowledge that I had been chosen to command their vast fleet in its great attack, since I was familiar with the serpent-universe which we were to attack.

* * * * *

A half-dozen hours after the raid of the serpent-ships, the last of the Andromedan craft had sped in from the farthest suns of their universe, and a full hundred thousand mighty ships covered the surface of the great world as far as the eye could reach, gleaming there beneath the light of the belted suns above. Long, grim and ready they waited, their gaseous Andromedan crews alert at the controls, while before us lay in the central clearing our own long, flat flag-ship. In it, too, the Andromedan crew stood ready, the scant score of my own strange followers among them, its space-door open and waiting for our start. Standing beside it, though, Jhul Din and I paused; then I turned back to where the score or more of Andromedans that were their leaders, the chiefs of their great council, stood.

Tall, steady figures of strange, thick green gas they stood there, regarding me, I knew. They had gathered all their forces to save a universe alien to themselves, to crush the serpent-peoples, and had placed all those forces under the command of myself, an alien to them. The greatness of their spirit, the calm, vast magnanimity of them, struck home to me in that moment, and impulsively I reached a hand out toward them once more, felt it grasped and gripped as though by solid flesh by a score of gaseous arms; a moment in which, across all the differences of mind and shape, the beings of two universes gripped hands in kinship of spirit. Then I had turned from them, and with Jhul Din was moving into our great ship, up to the pilot room, where the Spican took his position at the controls. The space-door below slammed shut, our generators throbbed suddenly, and then we were slanting smoothly upward.