I can not remember now the moments that followed that momentous decision, so overwhelming to us then was the consciousness that we had succeeded in our mission, had dared the awful void and the perils of three universes and had procured the help that might save our galaxy. I remember being led by our Andromedan guides into and through other rooms off the great hall; of the thousands of gaseous figures of the council crowding up the shaft toward the surface above, to speed to every quarter of their universe and summon all their fighting-ships; of Jhul Din noisy with exultation and Korus Kan quiet as ever, but with gleaming eyes. Then all about me seemed dissolving and darkening as the utter fatigue of our strenuous last hours overcame me, a fatigue through which only my knowledge of our mission's importance had so far borne me, and beneath which now I sank into dreamless sleep.
When I awoke I sensed that hours had passed, though Jhul Din and our followers lay still unconscious about me. Leaving them there, I strode out of the room and into the great Council Hall, whose stupendous circle lay empty now and bare, seeming immeasurably more vast in its white-lit emptiness than when filled with the thousands of gaseous Andromedans. I moved across it to the raised section at the center, stepped upon the purple-glowing disk beneath the ascending shaft, and then, thrust upward by the force of that disk, was moving smoothly toward the round opening in that ceiling and on up the shaft until I had burst out into the unceasing light of the belt of suns above, stepping sidewise onto the ground as I did so. And now I saw that Korus Kan, not a dozen feet away, had turned and was coming toward me.
"Their ships are gathering, Dur Nal," he exclaimed, eyes alight. "You've slept for nearly a day, there below, and their ships have been coming in those hours from every sun and world in their universe."
I swept my gaze about, a certain awe filling me as I saw now the tremendous forces that had gathered and were gathering here on the surface of this giant central world. A tremendous circular area of miles in diameter around us, around the shafts that led down to the hall of the council, had been cleared of all else and was now a single vast gathering-point for the thousands of ships that were massing here. Even while we gazed, the air above was being darkened by the swarms of those ships that shot ceaselessly downward, landing in this great circular area, drawing up in regular rows and masses. In tens of thousands they were grouped about us, a tremendous plain of gleaming metal ships that stretched as far as the eye could reach.
At the center of this vast plain of ships, though, there lay a round clearing, in which we ourselves stood, a clearing in which there rested only a hundred other ships, different far from the thousands around them, a hundred domed, gleaming craft like giant hemispheres of metal. Not a thousand feet from us lay these great, strange craft, their space-doors open and their Andromedan crews busy among the masses of strange mechanisms inside, and I recognized them instantly as the great craft I had seen in the thought-pictures in the Council Hall below, the mighty ships whose projected sheaths and walls of dark-purple force could move giant suns at will.
"The sun-swinging ships," I exclaimed, and Korus Kan nodded, his eyes upon them also.
"Yes," he said, "they'll be the most powerful weapons of the whole great fleet-with them we can crash the suns and worlds of the serpent-universe together at will."
Now, though, we turned our attention from them to the tens of thousands of ships that lay about us. In and out of those ships, too, were moving countless masses of Andromedans, swift-gliding gaseous figures who were inspecting and testing the mechanisms of their craft and the cylinders in their sides that shot forth the crumpling shafts of force. They were making all ready for our start, we knew, for the battle that must ensue when we poured down on the serpent-universe, and we strode over toward them. Already we had learned that the controls and mechanisms of the Andromedan ships were much like those of the serpent-ships, their speed being fully as great, but some features of them were still strange to me. A dozen steps only we took toward them, though, and then stopped short.
For down out of the sunlight above was slanting toward us a close-massed swarm of ships that seemed different from the masses of ships that were landing ceaselessly about us, that moved more slowly, more deliberately. Down it came while we watched it, standing there, seeing it change from a far swarm of black dots in the sunlight above to a mass of long dark shapes, that were becoming clearer to our eyes each moment-shapes that, I saw with a sudden great leap of my heart, were not long and flat, but oval.
"They're serpent-ships!" Korus Kan's great cry stabbed like a sword-blade of sound toward me. "They're the serpent-ships that pursued us to this universe-the three hundred that escaped when we were rescued-they've seen this great fleet gathering and have come to strike a blow at it."
Serpent-ships! My mind was racing with superhuman speed in that instant as they drove down toward us, and I saw that the Antarian was right, that these were the three hundred that had escaped when we were rescued by the Andromedans, and that we thought had fled back to their own universe. Instead they had turned and followed us, knowing that we meant to gather forces to attack their universe, had flashed into the Andromeda universe toward this central world, unseen among the swarms of other ships that were gathering here, and now were swooping down with their score of great disk attraction-ships lowermost, driving down toward us in a fierce, reckless attack. In a single instant it all flashed plain in my mind, and then Korus Kan and I had whirled around, and he was racing back toward the hundred domed sun-swinging ships behind us.
I'll warn these hundred ships." he yelled, as I turned too and raced toward the nearest of the thousands of fighting-ships about us.
Even as I ran toward those thousands of ships, though, their Andromedan crews still unaware of their peril, I saw the massed serpent-ships above slanting straight down toward the hundred domed craft behind me, their attraction-ships hanging motionless above those craft for a moment. I had reached the Andromedan fighting-ships, now, and as the crews of the nearest glided forth to meet me I cried out, pointing upward. They saw the serpent-ships swooping down from above, and then were throwing themselves into their own ships. I raced into one with them, up to the pilot room set near the stem on its long flat upper surface. The Andromedans beside me flung back the controls, then, and our ship and the ships about us were leaping up like light toward the down-rushing serpent-ships.
At the same moment I saw Korus Kan racing into one of the domed sun-swinging ships above which hovered the score of attraction-ships, saw the doors of those domed ships clanging shut as they prepared to escape from the menace above, since they could project their mighty purple force downward only, and would thus be helpless if caught in the attraction-grip of the disk-ships above. A moment more and those hundred domed craft, the most powerful weapon of the great Andromedan fleet, would be safe, I knew. But in that moment, as the three hundred serpent fighting-ships dashed down toward us, I saw the score of hovering attraction-ships glow suddenly with flickering light; the hundred sun-swinging ships beneath were pulled smoothly upward by that tremendous attractive force; and then the attraction-ships, grasping the hundred domed craft that were the heart of our fleet, were racing straight up and outward into space.
13: The Sailing of the Fleet
As that score of glowing disk-ships, with our own hundred sun-swinging craft in their grip, flashed up and out of sight, our fighting-ships were flashing upward with the three hundred fighting-ships of the serpent-creatures racing down to meet us. Then, before we could swerve aside from their mad downward charge to pursue the attraction-ships, they had met us, and in all the world about us there was nothing for the moment but crashing and striking ships. Even as they had flashed down upon us, and we up to meet them, the invisible shafts of force from our cylinders had stabbed up and crossed their downward-reaching death-beams, so that scores of their own ships had crumpled and collapsed in the instant before we met them, scores of ours in turn driving crazily forward and sidewise as the pale beams wiped all life from them in that same moment. As we met them, though, it seemed that our ships and theirs were all to perish alike in crashes in midair, without further need of weapons, so terrific was the impact.