Outward, into the darkness and silence of the eternal void, we were flashing once more, but as I stood with Jhul Din there in the pilot room, watching the great Andromeda universe dwindling in the darkness behind us, no exultation filled me. We had done what none in our galaxy ever before had done, had crossed the gulf and procured the aid with which we were racing to crush our enemies before they could pour down upon us, but my thoughts were not on these things but on the friends we were leaving behind us. Somewhere out in the void from that Andromeda universe, Korus Kan had gone to his death with the sun-swinging ships, and as we sped on through the void toward the serpent-universe it was the thought of that that held our minds rather than that of the great battle before us.
Hour upon hour of swift flight was dropping behind us as we raced steadily and smoothly on, detouring far around the great heat-regions and radio-active regions that we encountered, heading on toward the serpent-universe that was glowing ever broader before us. Smooth, immeasurable and endless they seemed, those hours of swift and steady flight, but at last we became aware that they were coming to an end, the dying universe ahead a great dim glow across all the blackness of the firmament. Ever our eyes hung upon that misty region of light as we flashed nearer and nearer to it, and ever the same doubt, the same wonder, rose and grew in our minds. Could we, really, crush and destroy the serpent-peoples in this strange universe? What would be the outcome of the tremendous battle we must fight in it to prevent the serpent-hordes from pouring across space toward our own universe?
Before us now the somber splendor of the dying universe filled the heavens, a vast mass of dead and dying suns, black and burned-out stars and suns of smoky crimson, glowing in the blackness of space like the embers of a mighty, dying fire. Around that great, dim-glowing mass we could make out the gigantic shell of flickering blue light, all but invisible, that surrounded it, the titanic and impenetrable wall of vibrations that enclosed it. In toward that wall our vast fleet was racing, moving at slackening speed as I touched a key before me, until at last the mighty flickering barrier loomed close ahead, the single opening in it, guarded by the huge space-forts on each side, lying straight before us. And as we drew within sight of that opening we saw, hanging in space just inside it, massed solidly across it, a thousand oval ships.
"The serpent-ships," I exclaimed. "They're going to hold the gate of their universe against us."
Jhul Din was staring at them as though puzzled. "But why only a thousand ships?" he said. "Why haven't they massed all their great fleet there at the gate-"
But I had turned, had pressed the keys before me in swift succession, and at once our tremendous fleet had slowed and smoothly halted, hanging there in space. Then, as I depressed still other keys, our vast mass of ships split smoothly into three separate masses, my flag-ship at the van of the central mass, the others moving to right and to left of us. A moment our three great masses of ships hung there, and then those on either side of us had flashed toward the great space-forts that guarded each side of the great opening, while our own central mass, my ship at its head, drove straight in toward the great opening itself.
Straight toward and into the opening raced our close-massed ships and then the next moment it seemed that all the universe about was transformed into a single awful mass of pale beams that stabbed toward and through us from the space-forts on each side and from the close-massed ships ahead. How our own ship escaped annihilation in that first moment of terrific, reeling shock, I cannot guess; since behind and about us scores of our ships were driving crazily away, their occupants annihilated by the deadly beams. Yet from all our own craft, reeling blindly as they were there in the opening, our cylinders were loosing their shafts of invisible force upon the space-forts to each side and upon the serpent-ships that leapt toward us from ahead. Then as those ships met ours, there in the narrow opening with the huge towering space-forts at each side, there ensued a moment of battle so terrific-battle more awful in its concentrated fury than any I had ever yet experienced-that it seemed impossible that ships and living beings could fight thus and live. Terrific was the scene about us-the vast black vault of infinite outer space behind us, the far-flung, dim-glowing mass of the dying universe before us, the gigantic wall of pale blue flickering light that separated the two, the single opening in that wall, flanked by the titanic metal space-forts, in which our thousands of close-massed ships charged forward toward the on-rushing serpent-ships.
Ships were crashing and smashing as we met them, death-beams were whirling thick from their ships and from the huge space-forts, serpent-craft were crumpling and collapsing beneath our shafts of force-and still our own ships were reeling away in scores as the death-beams found them. I knew that not for long could we continue this suicidal combat, since though the serpent-ships before us were being swiftly wiped out, the space-forts on each side still played their beams upon us with deadly effect. The other two divisions of our great fleet, dashing to attack the space-forts from outside while we battled there in the opening between them, had been thrust back, I saw, from each attack by the masses of pale beams that sprang from the forts.
But as the whole struggle hung thus in doubt, as our ships fell in fierce battle there in the opening beneath the beams of the forts, I saw a score of ships among those attacking the right-hand fort drive suddenly toward the fort with all their terrific utmost speed, leaping toward it like great thunderbolts of metal. From the great castle the death-beams sprang toward that score of ships, sweeping through them and wiping all life instantly from them, but before the ships had time to swerve or reel aside from that mad onward flight their terrific speed had carried them onward, and with a mighty, shattering collision they had crashed straight into the great fort's side.
I saw the great metal walls of the space-fort buckling and collapsing beneath that awful impact, and then all the space-fort had collapsed also, like a thing of paper, crushing within itself the serpent-creatures and generators and death-beam tubes it had held. To our left, another score of ships were leaping toward the left-hand fort in the same manner, and as they crashed into it, racing on through a storm of death-beams that swept through them, the left-hand space-fort too had buckled and crumpled and collapsed. At the same moment the last of the thousand serpent-ships before us was falling beneath our force-shafts, and then the great opening lay clear before us, with neither serpent-ships nor space-forts now in sight. We had forced the gates of the serpent-universe.
Then, our vast fleet massing together once more, we swept in through the opening, in a long column, into the dying universe. A full two thousand of our hundred thousand ships we had lost in that mad attack on the great gates, but heeded that but little as we flashed now into the serpent-creatures' universe. Through the dead and dying suns we sped, holding to a close-massed formation and moving slowly and cautiously forward. At every moment I expected the great serpent-fleet to burst out upon us from behind some dead or dying sun, for I knew that their allowing us to advance through their universe thus unhindered meant only that they had prepared some ambush for us. Yet as we sped in toward the center of the dying universe, there appeared no single enemy craft about us or on our space-charts, a total absence of all serpent-ships that began to affect our nerves as we drove ever more tensely forward.
At last there appeared far ahead the majestic trio of giant, crimson suns that swung at this universe's heart, and as we moved down toward these we knew that at last the final struggle was at hand, since between those suns turned the great world that was the heart of the serpent-civilization. Down toward that world we slanted smoothly, expecting every moment the uprush from it of the great serpent-fleet; yet still were we unchallenged and unattacked as we moved downward. Upon us there leapt no serpent-ships; in space about us, as we sank lower and lower, were no craft other than our own. In breathless silence we watched, sinking down toward the great sphere's surface, until at last we hung at a bare thousand feet above that surface, the mighty city of blue force stretching from horizon to horizon beneath us. And at sight of that city there burst from us wild, stunned cries.