Broader and broader the great turning world was growing as we slanted down toward it, until it lay like a tremendous dark shield beneath us, filling all the heavens below. As our ships sank still lower toward it, speed swiftly slackening, we began to make out details on its surface, to make out what seemed to be a vast mass of palely shining structures, towers and walls and vast, terraced buildings that glowed all with pale blue light, indescribably ghostly in appearance as they soared into the dusky, crimson light of the three encircling suns. Here and there through the masses of these blue-shining structures ran streets, narrow openings in which swarmed great masses of the writhing serpent-people. And as I gazed down upon this tremendous city, upon the countless glowing structures of pale blue light that made it up, my astonishment at what I saw broke from me in a startled cry.
"This city!" I exclaimed. "Its buildings are of vibrations like the great wall around their universe."
A city of vibrations. A mighty city that covered apparently all this giant planet, and yet whose every structure was built, not of matter but of etheric-vibrations that were matter-resistant like the great wall, vibrations infinitely more lasting and impenetrable than any matter, and projected upward at will into buildings of any shape or size. Here and there in the mighty city, even as we sped down over it, we could see buildings vanishing instanteously, could see other mighty buildings springing as instantly into being, all of the same pale blue light, reared or destroyed instantly by snapping on or off the vibrations that were projected upward to form them.
Now, as our ships slanted down over the vast mass of pale-glowing structures that stretched from horizon to horizon, I saw that ahead and beneath there lay amid those structures a mighty circular clearing, scores of miles in diameter and paved smoothly with the same pale blue force as the city's buildings and streets. In this vast circle, ranged regularly in long rows, rested thousands upon countless thousands of gleaming oval space-ships, in all stages of completion. Over and among them, swarming ceaselessly through them and toiling to complete them, moved mighty hordes of the serpent-creatures, armed with great tools of strange design, the thunderous clamor of their work coming up to us through the great planet's air. It was the immense workshop of the serpent-races that lay beneath us, I knew, in which their hordes labored ceaselessly to complete the mighty fleet that was to carry them through the void to our universe.
It was not the ranks of half-built ships, though, nor the toiling throngs among them, that held our gaze in the vast circular clearing over which we were racing. It was the colossal shape that loomed at the clearing's center and that occupied fully half the area of its vast circle, a stupendous metal cone-structure that rose in the air before us for fully a score of miles, the diameter of its base almost as great, a gigantic, smooth-sided mountain of metal towering there above the countless ships and workers in the great clearing around it, and above the far-stretching city about that clearing. Past its side our ships were speeding, and we could see now that about it and upon it there labored other great masses of serpent-creatures, swarming in and out of the heavy doors that swung open in its sides at various levels, and laboring upon the great masses of machinery that we could glimpse inside. Some of these, we saw, were great generators like those of our ships, making it clear that the vast cone was intended to race through space. Then, as Korus Kan's keen eyes peered toward and into its interior as we flashed past, he turned toward us, startled.
"It's a colossal death-beam projector!" he exclaimed. "One that can move through space like their ships-and that can stab forth a death-beam of unthinkable size. With that, when they complete it, they can wipe out all life on a whole world with a single flash of the stupendous beam."
Stunned, we gazed toward it as our ships flashed past. The tremendous cone itself was apparently complete, from vast base to the truncated, flattened tip. The generators that were to move it through space were apparently all installed, and the great hordes of serpent-workers who swarmed in it now were beginning to place in it the massed mechanisms for the production of the colossal death-beam, which would be projected up through a tremendous, hollow tube or tunnel running up from the great cone's interior to the great, round opening at its truncated tip. The terrific beam, generated in that interior, would flash out of that opening at the top in whatever direction the vast cone itself was headed in space, would flash through space with its tremendous power for immense distances, spreading out fanwise and expanding in every direction as it flashed on, until it struck the planet at which it was aimed, enveloping all that planet in its ghostly glow and wiping out instantly all life upon it. This, then, was the great weapon of irresistible power which the captured records of the serpent-creatures had mentioned. And irresistible it was, I saw now; for with it, when completed, the serpent-creatures could sally forth and with one sweep of the colossal beam destroy all fleets of space-ships opposing them by annihilating their crews, could descend upon our universe and with that same great beam wipe out all life upon world after world of our galaxy, swiftly, resistlessly, until in all our universe was left no living thing except themselves.
But now, even as we stared in horror and amazement at the vast cone, our ships were driving past it, still over the great clearing filled with close-ranked masses of the half-built ships, until before and beneath us lay the mighty circle's edge. And now we saw that beyond it, touching it, there lay another smaller circle of clear space, amid the vast city's crowding structures of blue light, a circle from which throngs of space-ships were constantly rising and upon which others were descending, it being obviously one of the points of departure and arrival for all ships. Down toward it our own ships were speeding, slower with every moment, until at last they had landed at this smaller circle's edge, our own closest to that edge, the pale-glowing mighty buildings towering up just beside us.
Then the space-doors of our ships were clanging open, and their occupants were writhing forth from them. A moment and the door of our prison snapped open; then, herded forward by a half-dozen of serpent-creatures armed with small death-beam tubes, we were marched out of the ship and onto the smooth pavement of blue force that covered this circle also. There, massed together, we were halted for a moment, and took the opportunity to stare about. From the ships behind us, just landed, the last of the serpent-crews had writhed forth, passing across to a narrow street that opened through the mass of towering, shimmering buildings before us, from the circular clearing's edge. We ourselves were being marched toward that street, now, the great oval ships lying empty and deserted behind us, and at sight of their open doors I turned and twitched the arm of Jhul Din, walking beside me.
"It's a chance in a million to get away," I whispered, to him and to Korus Kan. "If we can overpower these guards and get back inside our ship-"
They turned toward me, startled, and then as they glanced back toward the deserted ships their eyes lit with excitement. A moment more and I had whispered my plan, glancing toward the half-dozen guards behind us, and then the next moment we put it into effect, Jhul Din suddenly slumping to the blue-force pavement and lying motionless, sprawled as though suddenly stricken down. It was the most primitive of ruses, and I could only hope in that moment that our guards might not have had experience of it. The next moment, though, they had seen the motionless form of the big Spican, and with a natural perplexity had writhed forward toward it, holding their beam-tubes, though, gripped in the coils of their strange bodies, alertly toward ourselves. Beside the big crustacean they halted, tubes trained still upon us as they inspected him. Then the next moment the Spican had reached out his great arms with inconceivable swiftness and suddenness, grasping the serpent-guards beside him before they could turn their tubes down upon him, threshing with them in sudden fierce battle as we rushed forward to aid him.