"Look!" he cried. "The outside-temperature dial." Swiftly we raised our own eyes toward it, the dial upon which was shown the temperature outside the ship. It should have shown absolute zero, we knew, as always in the infinite cold of empty space. But now it did not, and our eyes widened as we stared at it, in utter astonishment and fear. For it registered a temperature of thousands of degrees in the empty void about us.
"Heat!" I cried. "Heat in empty outer space. It's unthinkable."
Unthinkable it was; yet, even as we stood and stared, the arrow on the outside-temperature was still creeping steadily forward, showing a swiftly increasing heat outside, while the air inside had become all but unbreathable, parching to the lungs. At the same moment a faint light began to appear about us, a dim red glow that was intensifying with each moment that we raced onward, and as we wheeled toward the windows we saw, in the blackness of space before us, a great, faintly glowing region of red light ahead, stretching across the heaven before us. Ever stronger that crimson glow was growing as we raced on, the heat about us mounting with it, and from beneath came the cries of fear of our crew as they too glimpsed the awful region of heat and light through which we now were racing.
I knew that not much longer could the heat about us increase thus if our ship and ourselves were to survive, yet steadily the arrows on the temperature-dials were moving forward, and as more and more of the awful heat outside penetrated through the insulation of our heat-resistant walls I felt my brain turning dizzily, saw big Jhul Din stagger and sway against the wall, and saw Korus Kan, the heat penetrating through his metal body even more than through our own, slumping sidewise across the controls as he was overcome by it, only half conscious. I sprang to his side, despite my own dizziness and parching throat and lungs, grasped the controls and held our ship straight onward, since all about us the vast glow of crimson light and heat stretched, encircling us and beating upon us as we flashed onward. No flame there was, nor incandescent gas, nor solid burning matter of any kind, nothing but a titanic region of brilliant crimson light, without visible source of any kind, glowing with terrific heat there in the emptiness of outer space.
The glow about us was becoming more brilliant with each moment that we raced on, and as the heat outside and inside increased still more I saw Jhul Din fling open the pilot room's door in a vain search for cooler air; heard from beneath a rumbling, ominous thumping and cracking, as our heat-seared walls began to warp in the terrible temperature to which they were being subjected. Far ahead in the awful region of heat and light through which we were speeding I glimpsed now a deeper spot of crimson light in the great red glow, and as we raced on toward it I saw that it was the center of all the great outpouring of red light and of heat, since it was all but blinding in its brilliance, while our dials showed a temperature mounting each moment that we neared it.
"It's the center of the whole thing!" cried Jhul Din, staggering toward me and then slumping down to the floor, overcome. "Keep the ship clear of it!" he shouted, collapsing as he did so, while beside me I saw Korus Kan, completely unconscious, neither the great crustacean Spican nor the metal-bodied Antarian possessing my own resistance to the heat that now was smothering us, though I too knew that not much longer could I hold to the controls.
Hold to them I did, though, but half conscious now myself; then as there flamed dead ahead the heart of the whole great inferno, a blazing area of brilliant crimson light that dazzled me, its terrific heat pouring full down upon our plunging ship, I swung the controls sidewise, swerving our craft to the left and around the great heat-region's fiery heart. Along its side we flashed, our ship plunging and reeling now as it shot through ether-currents that must have been of unparalleled size and speed, but even in that darkness that was stealing over my senses I could see that in that hell of light and heat to our right there was still no core of matter, nothing but light and heat and space. Full beside us it flamed as we shot past it, our rocking ship's sides still grating and cracking terribly beneath the heat that beat upon them, racing past that awful glare of crimson light and heat that was like a colossal forge at which some mighty workman beat out flaming suns, blazing in terrific intensity and dimensions there in the void between universes.
On we raced, while I strove with all my waning strength to hold the ship, bucking and swaying as it was, clear of the fiery inferno to our right, and then it was dropping behind, the brilliant crimson light and terrible heat about us lessening a little as we shot by it. Moments more and it had dwindled to a deeper spot of light in the great red-glowing region to our rear, and then as we flashed still onward at our utmost speed the last of the light and heat about us were passing; so that a moment later, with heat-mechanisms again switched on, we were flashing again through the cold black void as before. With the passing of the overpowering heat the cracking of the ship's sides had ceased, and Korus Kan and Jhul Din were staggering to their feet, consciousness returning with the cooler air. Together we stared back, to where only a swiftly vanishing little glow of faint red light in the darkness behind gave evidence of the hell of heat and light through which we had just come.
"Heat and light in the void of outer space!" I cried. "The thing's impossible-and yet we came through it."
Korus Kan had been gazing back with us, but now he turned at my exclamation, shook his head. "Not impossible," he said quickly. "That heat and that light we came through were not generated like the usual heat and light of burning suns-they were generated in empty space by the ether itself!" And as we stared blankly at him he quickly explained himself. "You know that heat and light are but vibrations of the ether of various frequencies, just as are radio-active or chemical rays, and the electro-magnetic waves we use for speech and signaling. Highest of all in frequency are those electro-magnetic waves; next in order of frequency come heat waves; next the red light vibrations, and down the various colors of light to the lower-frequency violet light vibrations; and below these, lowest of all, the radio-active or chemical rays. Well, our scientists have long known that various of these ether-vibrations have been set up in the ether of outside space by the collision of great ether-currents. By those collisions are formed sometimes electro-magnetic vibrations, interfering with our speech-vibrations as static, or sometimes light-vibrations, glowing without visible source in the heavens and known to us as the zodiacal light. Here in the void, though, where mighty currents of size and speed inconceivable must collide, the vibrations set up were in the frequency-range of heat and of the lower adjoining frequency, that of red light; so that that region we came through is one where the immense ether-currents that we plunged through collide and set up a ceaseless outpouring of heat and light waves there in the ether, in empty space itself."
I shook my head. "It seems plausible," I said, "yet the reality of it-that titanic region of awful heat and light-"
"It seems strange enough." he admitted, "but it's really no stranger than if it had been a great region of static, or-"
A sharp cry from the Spican stabbed through our talk. "The walls!" he shouted. "They're beginning to glow-look-"
Startled, we swung about, and then the blood drove from my heart at the strangeness and awfulness of what we saw; for, engrossed in our talk, we had not noticed that all in the pilot room about us, walls and floor and mechanism and controls, was beginning to shine out with a strange, flickering luminosity, a misty, fluorescent light that with each moment was waxing in intensity, a quivering, unfamiliar light that seemed to glow from all in our ship, as it raced swaying on, though outside was nothing but the same blackness of space as before! Even as we stared about us, astounded, our own bodies, and especially the metal body of Korus Kan, had begun to radiate the same lambent light, and then, with a sudden great leap of my heart, I saw that the edges and corners of the walls about us were smoothing and rounding a little, crumbling and disappearing a little as though slowly disintegrating. At the same moment a strange tingling shook through every atom of my body, a quivering force that flooded through me with increasing intensity.