For the mighty city was-empty! Empty, lifeless, its streets deserted and bare, its vast mass of towering structures of blue vibrations without occupant of any kind! No single serpent-shape moved in all that tremendous city, and I saw that upon the great clearing where the vast serpent-fleet and the colossal death-beam cone had rested there was now nothing. The world beneath us, the universe about us, were a world, universe-deserted!
"Too late!" Jhul Din's cry came to my ears like the voice of doom. "The defense of the gate was only to delay us, and the serpent-races have gone-they've struck! They've massed all their hordes in their great fleet and with their giant death-beam cone have sailed out across the void to attack our universe. We're too late."
Too late! The thought beat upon my brain like drumbeats of horror as we stood there, in utter silence. All had been in vain-our tremendous journey, our fierce struggles, the loss of Korus Kan-since already far across the void the serpent-hordes in their countless ships were rushing toward our universe, where their vanguard had prepared a foothold for them. They had known that we were summoning help from the Andromeda universe, had swiftly gathered and sailed on their great attack, leaving only a force at the great gate to delay us. Too late! Then suddenly resolution flamed again inside me, and I pressed swiftly the keys before me, sent our whole fleet turning and speeding outward again-out through the dying universe away from the great trio of suns at its center-out toward the great opening in the vibration-wall.
"Too late-no!" I shouted. "We'll follow them across the void toward our own universe. They could not have completed that great death-beam cone yet-they've taken it with them to our own universe to complete it there-and if we can reach them and attack them before they have time to complete it, we yet may save our universe."
Now our great fleet was rushing toward and through the opening in the vibration-wall, out into the void of outer space once more. There we halted, massed again in our pyramidal flight-formation, and then were turning slowly toward the left, toward the far little patch of glowing light that was our universe. Then we were moving toward it, with swiftly gathering speed, faster and faster, until at our utmost velocity we were racing through the infinite immensities of space toward it; flashing on toward the last act of the vast, cosmic drama that was rising now to its climax; rushing on through the void toward the final great battle in which the destinies of three mighty universes and all their suns and worlds and peoples were to be decided for all time.
14: Back to the Galaxy
Standing once more in the pilot room, with Jhul Din at the controls beside me, I stared out through the room's fore-windows, straining my vision out through the cosmic darkness that lay about our onward-rushing ships. Far ahead, in that darkness, lay a great, glowing mass of light, lay a radiant, disk-like mass that was resolving itself into a great swarm of brilliant stars as we rushed ever on toward it. In silence we two gazed toward it, for it was our own great galaxy that lay before us, toward which for day upon dragging day, hour upon slow hour, our mighty fleet had rushed on and on.
Now, as we gazed toward it, waxing there in splendor before us in the lightless heavens, I could not but reflect upon how infinitely strange and far a journey had been ours since we had left it, across what infinities of trackless space and upon what alien suns and worlds we had gone. Out into the infinite we had gone for the help that might save our universe, and now out of the infinite we were coming with that help, but two returning where three had gone out. Yet would the help we brought be in time to save our galaxy? Already the great serpent-hordes, we knew, would have reached that galaxy, would have settled upon the suns and worlds of the great Cancer cluster where their vanguard had made for them a base, and there they would be laboring to complete the colossal death-beam cone with which they could wipe out all the life on all the galaxy's worlds, and all our own great fleet. Could we reach them and conquer them before they completed that great cone of death?
We were within a few score hours of the galaxy ahead, I knew, and as we raced on toward it at the same unvarying velocity, its individual greater stars were burning out more clearly, and the great Cancer cluster was a tiny ball of light at the glowing swarm's edge. Countless billions of miles of space lay between us and that cluster still, I knew, yet it was with something of hope that I watched it as we flashed on. For though inside it the gigantic death-cone might be approaching completion, it would not be long before our vast fleet would be pouring down upon that cluster and upon the serpent-hordes within it, before the great cone could be finished.
As I mused thus, though, there came a low exclamation from Jhul Din, and I turned to find him peering forward into the void with a gaze suddenly tense. Then he had turned toward me and was pointing ahead and to the left into the darkness before us.
"One of the great heat-regions." he exclaimed.
I gazed out toward it and in a moment I, too, had seen it-a dim, faint little glow of red light, flickering there in the darkness of space before us and to the left. Steadily that little glow was broadening, deepening, though, while our temperature-dials were recording swiftly rising heat outside as we neared it. There was no need to change the course of our fleet, though, since the heat-region lay toward the left and our present course would take us safely past its right edge. It was, perhaps, the same region into which we had blundered on our outward flight, and with interest we watched it as our great fleet shot forward and along its outer edge. It was a vast area of glowing crimson light to our left, now, a terrific furnace of heat-vibrations loosed by the collision of the great ether-currents through which we were plunging. Then, just as our fleet was speeding directly past the mighty, glowing region, along its outer edge, our prow turned slowly toward the left, toward the heat-region, and then we were racing straight inward toward the region's fiery heart.
For an instant I stared in stunned amazement as our ship shifted thus, then whirled around to the Spican. "Jhul Din!" I exclaimed. "The controls. The ship's heading into the heat-region."
But already he was twisting frantically at the controls, and now he looked up wildly toward me. "The ship doesn't answer the controls." he cried. "It's heading straight inward-and the ships behind us-" And he pointed up toward the space-chart, where I saw now that as they rushed on, the thousands of ships behind us were shifting their course like our own and racing into the heat-region after us-racing in like us toward a fiery death. Then, as I gazed stupefied up toward the space-chart, I saw something else, saw that inches to the left of our fleet on the chart, away on the other side of the glowing heat-region from us, there hung a half-thousand ships, that showed on the chart as a close-massed swarm of dots, hanging there motionless. And as I saw them I understood, and with understanding a great shout broke from me.