We stopped short a moment, then raced down the corridor and burst up into the pilot room, where Korus Kan turned swiftly from the controls toward us.
"Ships are approaching from ahead." he cried, pointing up toward the big space-chart.
We looked, and saw that even as he had said there moved upon that chart a half-hundred black dots, in close formation, creeping steadily downward across the blank chart to meet the upward-creeping dot that was our ship. In silent amazement we watched, as our craft raced on, and then saw that as we neared them the fifty ships ahead were slowly halting, and then beginning to move back toward the Andromeda universe in the same direction as ourselves. They were allowing us to slowly overtake them, obviously intending to race beside us at the same speed as ourselves, toward the Andromeda universe. And as they made that move Jhul Din uttered an exclamation.
"They must be ships from the Andromeda universe itself." he cried. "They've learned of our approach by space-charts of some kind-have come out to meet us."
My heart leapt at the thought, for if it were so it would mean the first success of our mission across the void. Silently we watched, as our ship's single dot on the chart raced closer and closer toward the half-hundred dots above it, they moving now at a speed almost equal to our own. Within moments we would be able to glimpse them, we knew, and gazed tensely into the blackness of space ahead, toward the Andromeda universe's flaring suns, as our craft raced on. Moments were passing, tense moments of silence and watchfulness, and then far ahead we glimpsed in the void, hardly to be seen against the great glow of the Andromeda universe, a little mass of light-points that steadily were largening as we gradually overtook them.
A full fifty of them in sight, they were flashing on in a close formation, allowing us to overhaul them, changing from mere light-points into dark, vaguely glimpsed shapes as we drove nearer toward them. Then at last we had reached them, were driving in among them as they moved now at the same speed as ourselves, could see their shapes more clearly as long and oval, their front ends white-lit transparent-walled rooms like our own. Nearer we were flashing to those before us and about us, and then in those white-lit control rooms I glimpsed their occupants, slender, writhing pale shapes at sight of which I cried aloud.
"Serpent-ships!" I cried. "Serpent-ships from the dying universe ahead! Those back in our galaxy from whom we escaped have warned them of our coming, by the means of etheric communication their records mentioned-they know our mission and they've come out to intercept us here in space."
Even as I cried out, Korus Kan's hands flashed out to the controls, but he was an instant too late. For at that same moment the ships just before us had turned and circled in one swift movement, and were rushing straight back toward us. I had a flashing glimpse of their white-lit prows racing toward us through the intense darkness, and saw with photographic clearness the slender serpent-shapes in those brilliantly lit pilot rooms, and then the foremost ship loomed suddenly enormous as it flashed straight toward us. With a sharp cry Korus Kan drove the controls sidewise to swerve our ship, but before we could avoid the onrushing craft ahead it was upon us and with a terrific, thunderous shock had crashed straight into our own racing ship.
7: The Gates of a Universe
I think now that it was only that last jerking aside of the controls by Korus Kan that saved us from utter annihilation in that moment. For as he moved them our ship swerved sidewise, not enough to avoid the collision but enough to cause the onrushing ship to strike our own obliquely along the side instead of head on, and it was that alone that saved us. The crash shook our great craft like a leaf in a gale, trembling and reeling there in the black gulf of space and flinging us all to the pilot room's floor, and for a moment it seemed to us that our ship had been riven apart. Then, as it steadied, we scrambled to our feet, just in time to see the ship that had crashed into us reeling away to the side, a shattered mass of metal, while down upon us from above and all about the other serpent-ships were swooping.
As Korus Kan sprang back to the controls I leapt to the order-tube, was on the point of shouting a command to our crew beneath, when down from the hovering ships above us there dropped around us a dozen or more of great flexible ropes or loops of gleaming metal, that encircled our ship like great snares. Within another instant our craft had been drawn upward by them until it lay securely lashed between two of the enemy ships, our ray-tubes useless now; since to loose them was but to perish with the ships that held us. Then another ship was slanting down above us, and as it hung over us there projected downward from its lower space-door toward our own upper space-door a hollow tube of metal of the same diameter as the two space-doors, that attached itself with a click to our own upper door, forming a hermetically sealed gangway there between our two ships in space.
Until that moment we had stood motionless in amazement, somewhat stunned by the suddenness of our ship's capture; then as the space-door of our ship clanged open above I uttered a cry, sprang out into the corridor that ran the ship's length, and saw the members of our crew bursting into that corridor in answer to my cry, even as from the space-door chamber beside it there writhed out a horde of scores of the serpent-creatures. Jhul Din and Korus Kan were beside me, now, and with shouts of fierce anger we rushed upon the masses of serpent-creatures who still were pouring down from the ship above through the hollow gangway.
The m�l�e that followed was wilder than when we ourselves had captured this same ship; since though we and all our crew flung ourselves forward upon the things without hesitation, we were weaponless and outnumbered by ten to one. As it was, I struck out with all my power at the hideous, writhing beings, feeling some of them collapse beneath my wild blows even as they strove to coil about me; saw Korus Kan, with his triple powerful metal arms, crushing the life from those who leapt upon him, cool and silent as ever even in that wild din of battle; glimpsed the great Spican grasping those about him in his tremendous arms and literally tearing them into fragments as we battled on. But rapidly the members of our crew who battled about us were going down, the life crushed from them by the coiling bodies that overwhelmed us, and then as I strode on I too was gripped from beneath, by a serpent-creature that had wound itself about my feet, and now pulled me down.
Struggling in the grip of a half-dozen of the alien creatures, I heard Jhul Din shouting hoarsely, saw him finally pulled from his feet also by a great mass of writhing things, and then Korus Kan and the remainder of our crew were overcome too, and within another moment all was over. Scores of the serpent-creatures lay dead about us, but with them lay many of our own crew; not more than a bare score were left to us now of all our party. Gripped tightly still by the serpent-creatures, we were thrust down a narrow stair and into an empty little storeroom beneath the pilot room, in its metal walls but a single space-window giving a view forward. The door snapped shut as the last of us were thrust inside, and then our captors had left us, the lashings that had snared our ship were cast loose by the ships on either side, and as the humming of the generators waxed loud again our ship and those about it began to move once more through space.
"They're heading now toward the dying universe," exclaimed Korus Kan, gazing through the single window into the black gulf outside. "They're going to take us there as prisoners."
But I too, gazing through the window at his side, had seen that our ship's prow was turning now toward the right, so that ahead now instead of the great glowing mass of the Andromeda universe there lay the dim, faintly glowing patch of light that was the serpent-peoples' waning universe. To it now our ship and the ships about us were flashing at greater and greater speed, and as they hummed on the despair that had already gripped me deepened. It was not the peril in which we ourselves lay that affected me, for well I knew that from the moment of our capture our fate had been sealed, and that our temporary reprieve from death meant only that some more horrible fate awaited us in the dying universe. It was that the last chance of our own universe had vanished with our capture, the last hope to summon from the Andromeda universe the help that could save our galaxy gone now forever.