An abrupt instinct of danger flashed through me in that moment, and my hands flashed down to the keys, to signal to our great mass of ships to slow our pursuit. But in the moment that they did so the thing had happened. For as our close-massed fleet raced on, after those hundred red-glowing ships ahead that lay between us and the serpent fleet, it was as though a gigantic hand had in the next moment grasped the compact mass of our ships and scattered them in all directions like a handful of sand, throwing Jhul Din and me to the floor as our ship was hurled blindly away with terrific force, scattering our compact-massed fleet in a single instant across all the heavens, for millions upon millions of miles. And as we were flung thus blindly outward I cried aloud.
"Those red-glowing serpent-ships!" I cried. "They've generated colossal ether-currents behind them as they fled on-ether-currents that have shattered our fleet."
For I knew, even in that desperate instant that that was the explanation. Those red-shining ships had been specially designed to project a great force into the ether behind them that would cause gigantic currents to whirl through that ether instantly, and the flight of the serpent-fleet had been feigned to give them a chance to use those ships. They had loosed the vast ether-currents behind them as they fled on before us, currents that had flung the ships of our fleet to all sides like a handful of toys as we raced into them. And now, with our ships scattered far across the heavens in all directions, our fleet shattered and disorganized and incapable of resistance, the massed thousands of serpent-ships ahead had turned and were racing back toward us.
Back they came, flashing in a close-massed formation still, gathered thousands of great ships speeding back upon our own ship and upon the few hundreds of our ships scattered directly about us. In an instant more they would reach us, and the death-beams of their mighty fleet would sweep us out of existence, would wipe out our few ships and proceed onward, annihilating the far-scattered ships of our great fleet before they could gather to resist! Motionless we hung there in space, in that instant, as they raced back toward us, the remnant of their mighty fleet looming vast before us, and I heard as through a great stillness the clang of the cylinders beneath as our Andromedans swung them forward, to die fighting to the last.
"It's the end, Dur Nal," Jhul Din was shouting, and I turned to him, my eyes meeting his strangely, steadily, in that instant.
"The end for us-and for our universe," I said, softly. Then in the next instant the mighty serpent-fleet was looming gigantic above and ahead of us, was flashing down in one titanic swoop upon us.
But what was that? Midway in that swooping plunge the serpent-fleet had halted, had recoiled. In a daze we looked up toward it, about us, behind us-and then we were crying out in our excitement. For there from above and behind us was racing toward us a new, tremendous fleet of ships, ships that were not oval like the serpent-ships, or long and flat like our Andromedan craft, but were long and tapering and cigar-like, as the ships of the Interstellar Patrol had been. In a vast armada of tens of thousands they were sweeping out from the center of our galaxy, toward and over us at a speed equal to our greatest speed, and then from them narrow rays of dazzling red light were springing out, striking thick among the massed serpent-ships ahead, annihilating those they struck in bursts of blinding crimson light. And as I saw that I cried aloud again:
"They're our own galaxy's ships." My great cry was like a trumpet-call of faith and hope in that mad moment. "They're the great fleet of ships that Council Chief said they'd build-and they're striking out now with us to save our universe."
16: From Outside the Universe!
The moment that followed was one of action and combat on such a scale as to stun the senses. Even as the great fleet of our galaxy rushed forward upon the serpent-fleet that had recoiled before it, the far-scattered ships of our own great armada had had time to rush in toward me again, to mass behind me. Then, as my fingers flashed down on the signal-keys, our own Andromedan fleet and the mighty galaxy-fleet above us were leaping as one toward the serpent-ships. Before those ships had time to dodge us we were upon them and our own beneath them, and as we flashed thus above and beneath them thousands of deadly force-shafts struck up toward the serpent-ships from beneath, while from above countless brilliant crimson rays burned down toward them.
It was a scene unimaginable, that, as the three great fleets crossed and clashed. Three titanic armadas, each of thousands of close-massed mighty ships, that whirled and struck and ran there in the space between the crowding stars, three far-distant universes coming at last to death-grips within one of those universes. Flashing beneath the serpent-fleet it seemed that in all the firmament above us was but a single vast mass of oval ships, and as our invisible force-shafts stabbed up in swift revenge toward those ships they were crumpling here and there, collapsing and falling, whirling away toward the nearest of the thundering suns about us, while other ships among and above them were flaring wildly in great explosions of crimson light and vanishing as the annihilating rays of the fleet of the Federated Suns struck down upon them from above.
Thousands of ships, I think, must have gone into annihilation in that first wild rush of the three fleets, for ships all about our own were reeling blindly away as the pale beams that whirled down from above swept through them. Upward and downward those ghostly beams were leaping thick, finding their mark in many of the ships of our two fleets, but it was the serpent-fleet that suffered most in that mad rush. Caught as they were between the deadly fires of both our fleets, though only in the moment that we flashed past, their ships had yet vanished by hundreds, by thousands, as force-shaft and red ray flashed and stabbed among them. I heard Jhul Din shouting with mad joy as we shot past them beneath, heard, too, the cries of our few followers among the Andromedan crew beneath, and then we were past them, were pausing in space, as I pressed the keys of the fleet-control, and were turning to rush back for another blow.
Above us now the great galaxy-fleet was turning likewise, slanting down beside us, and then our two fleets were leaping together back toward the serpent-ships. They had courage, the beings in those ships, for though now the tables were turned and it was we who outnumbered them, they had turned, massed still closely together, and were racing forward to meet us. By this time our mighty battle had reeled sidewise toward one of the near-by suns, a great double yellow star that flamed to our left in growing, awful glory as we raced across the firmament toward it; but no thought did we give it in that wild moment, since ahead the serpent-fleet, forming suddenly into a long wedge, was racing toward us. On it came, heading straight toward our two fleets that flashed to meet it, and then just before it reached those fleets it veered swiftly sidewise, to pass by the side of our own fleet, raking us with its beams while our own ships should mask them from the rays of the galaxy-fleet.
In the instant that they had veered, though, I had seen their maneuver, had pressed lightning-like on the keys before me. Instantly our own great fleet shot sharply sidewise also, so far sidewise in that moment that instead of racing past us the serpent-fleet flashed between us and the galaxy-fleet. And again, as they ran the gantlet of the terrible rays and force-shafts of our two fleets, their ships were crumpling and vanishing in flares of light, through all their mighty mass. Another such deadly blow and we would have shattered their fleet, I knew, and as the serpent-ships shot past us and beyond us, their own death-beams stabbing out sullenly still, our two great armadas were turning again, were wheeling and flashing back again for another great blow, while to our side the twin great golden suns toward which we were swaying were looming now in dazzling grandeur.