"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 surprise, 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 the 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 jelly-fish 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.