"They've seen us!" shouted Jhul Din. "They know we're not of their own fleet!"
But as he shouted I had leapt to the order-tube, had cried into it a swift command, and then as the five ships veered in toward us there leapt from our vessel's sides long, swift shafts of crimson light, the deadly red rays with which our captured ship had been equipped at Canopus, narrow brilliant shafts that touched the two foremost of those five racing ships and annihilated them even as they sprang toward us. The other three were leaping on, though, their death-beams reaching like great fingers of ghostly light through the void toward us, and I knew that we could not hope to escape them by flight, since they were as swift as our own craft; so in a moment I made decision, and shouted to Korus Kan to head our ship about.
Around we swept, in one great lightning curve, and then were rushing straight back upon the three racing ships. Into and between them we flashed, death-beams and red rays stabbing thick through the void in the instant that we passed them. I saw one of the great pale beams slice down through the rear end of our ship, heard shouts from beneath as those of our crew in that end were wiped out of existence, and then we were past, were turning swiftly in space and flashing back outward again, and saw that two of the three ships before us were visible only as great crimson flares, the other ship hanging motionless for the moment as though stunned by the destruction of its fellows.
"Four gone!" yelled Jhul Din, as we flashed toward the last of the five ships.
That last ship, though, paused only a moment as we raced toward it, and then suddenly flashed away into the void to the right, vanishing instantly from sight as it raced in flight toward the Cancer cluster. We had destroyed and routed the squadron that had challenged us, had broken through the enemy's great patrol. Korus Kan was opening our power-controls to the utmost, and now the throbbing and beating of the great generators beneath was waxing into a tremendous, thrumming drone, as we shot outward into space, the Cancer cluster falling behind us as we flashed out at a tremendous and still steadily mounting speed.
Out-out-into the vast black vault of sheer outer space that lay stretched before and about us now, the awful velocity of our great craft increasing by tens of thousands, by hundreds of thousands of light-speeds, as we shot out into the untrammeled void. Behind us the mighty, disk-like mass of flaming stars that was our universe was contracting in size each moment, dwindling and diminishing, but before us there glowed out in the vast blackness misty little patches of light, universes of suns inconceivably remote from our own. Strongest among them glowed a single light-patch, full before us, and it was on it that our eyes were fixed as our ship at utmost speed plunged on. It was the Andromeda universe, and we were flashing out into the mighty void of outer space toward it at a full ten million light-speeds, to seek the help which alone could save our universe from doom.
6: Into the Infinite
Standing at the controls, his tireless metal figure erect as he gazed out into the vast blackness of cosmic space that lay before us, Korus Kan turned from that gaze toward me as I stepped inside the pilot room. Silently I stepped over beside him, and silently, as was our wont, we contemplated the great panorama before us. A stupendous vault of sheer utter darkness it stretched about us, darkness broken only by the misty light of the great universes of thronging suns that floated here and there in this vast void through which we were racing. Behind us our own galaxy lay, just another of those dim glows; for hours had passed since we had launched out into outer space from its edge, and in those hours our awful speed had carried us on through the void through thousands of light-years of space.
But though in those hours of flight our own universe had dwindled to a mere mist of light, those other misty patches that were the universes ahead had hardly grown at all in size or intensity of light, making us realize that even the vast expanse of space through which our ship had already flashed was but a fraction of the gulf that lay between us and the great Andromeda universe. Before us the soft glow that was that universe seemed a little brighter, a little larger, but even so I knew that more than a score of days must elapse before even our ship's tremendous velocity would bring us to it. And even were we able to secure the help we needed, it would still be many days before we could flash back to our own galaxy, and in those days, I well knew, the serpent-invaders would be completing their last plans, tightening their grip on all the suns and worlds of the Cancer cluster, and preparing the way for the vast hordes that soon would cross the void to pour down on that cluster, spreading resistlessly from it across all our galaxy.
It was with heavy heart that I gazed ahead, knowing these things, but my gloomy thoughts were suddenly interrupted by an exclamation from Korus Kan, who had been peering intently forward into the tenebrous void, and who now pointed ahead, toward the right.
"That flicker of light," he said: "you see it?"
I bent forward, gazing to where he was pointing in the heavens before us, and then at last made out in the blackness, not far to the right of the glowing Andromeda universe, another patch of light of equal size, but one whose light was so dim as only to be seen with straining eyes. A mere dim flicker of light it was, in that crowding darkness, but as I gazed at it the nature of it suddenly came clearly to my mind, and I uttered a low exclamation myself.
"The universe of the serpent-creatures." I said. "It's the dying universe from which they came to invade our own."
He nodded. "Yes. It's nearer the Andromeda universe than our own, too."
I saw that he was right, and that the two universes, that of Andromeda and this dim, dying one, lay comparatively close to each other, and at almost equal distances from our own, the two forming the base of a long, narrow triangle of which our own universe was the apex. Together we gazed toward that dim flicker of light, in a thoughtful silence. We knew, even as we gazed, what great preparations were going on in that dying universe for the conquest of our own galaxy, what mighty efforts the serpent-races there were making, to complete their vast fleet and the strange, huge weapon which the records we had captured had mentioned, so that they could flash through the void to pour down on our galaxy. The knowledge held us wrapped in thought as our great ship raced on, still holding to its tremendous utmost velocity, rocking and swaying a little as it plunged through the vast ether-currents which swirled about us here in outer space.
Gradually, as we two stood in silence with our great craft speeding on, I became aware that during the last few minutes the air inside the pilot room had become perceptibly warmer, and that its warmth was still increasing. I glanced at the dial that registered the output of our heat-generators, but it was steady at its accustomed position; yet with each moment the warmth was increasing, until within a few minutes more the heat about us had become decidedly uncomfortable. Korus Kan, too, had noticed it, and had now swung backward the control of the heat-generators; yet still the warmth increased, the heated air in the pilot room rapidly becoming unbearable. I turned to the Antarian, fully alarmed now, but as I did so the door snapped open and Jhul Din burst up into the pilot room.
"What's happening to the ship?" he cried. "Its inner walls are getting almost too hot to touch."
In stunned surprise we gazed at each other, our heating-mechanisms turned completely off now, yet the inside-temperature dial's arrow was still moving steadily forward! The thing was beyond all reason, we knew, and for an instant we stood in amazement, the heat increasing still about us. Then suddenly Jhul Din pointed upward toward the massed dials above the controls, his arm quivering.