"It's the last stretch!" I exclaimed, as we gazed tensely at the chart and into the void ahead. "Unless we get to the Cancer cluster ahead of them now it's the end."
Our ship was leaping forward still at its uttermost speed, its strained generators functioning nobly, but the great swarm behind was again picking up speed itself, the hundred ships massed together a few million miles ahead of the main swarm hardly more than an inch behind our own ship-dot on the space-chart. On-on-straight toward the fiery mass of the Cancer cluster we fled, while behind us, in cruel repetition of the first part of this wild chase the pursuing ships slowly cut down the gap between us, the hundred foremost ones leaping every moment closer toward us, while behind them the main swarm came on more deliberately. Ahead now the galaxy filled the heavens before us, myriads of burning stars that gemmed the infinite night with their flaming brilliance, but of all in the stupendous scene around and before us we had eyes only for the thronging suns of the Cancer cluster, and for the space-chart above us.
On-on-the minutes of that mad onward flight were passing each like an eternity as we leapt forward, tensely braced there in the pilot room, peering forward, with behind us the hundred pursuing ships close on our track, remorselessly overtaking us, with behind them the great swarm of thousands of ships that were driving to attack our universe. Ahead of us, I knew, there somewhere in the flaming cluster of suns before us, the cruisers of the great Interstellar Patrol, the warships of our universe, would be gathering and massing to meet that great invading fleet, but unless we could escape and lead it into the cluster where they waited they would have no chance for a surprise attack. Before us by now the great cluster lay in waxing, flaming splendor, only a scant few billion miles ahead, its thronging, gathered suns burning out in supreme glory amid the galaxy's looser-swarming suns, but now the hundred foremost ships of the mighty swarm behind were almost upon us.
Even as I turned, now, toward the distance-window behind me, I heard a deep exclamation from Jhul Din, who had turned to gaze back also, and as I too gazed through that window a chill seemed to creep through my very blood, for light-points were showing there in the blackness behind, and drawing swiftly nearer. It was the hundred foremost ships! Ever closer they were racing toward us, overtaking us again with every moment, while far behind them the main swarm raced on after them. With each passing moment the light-points behind were broadening, brightening, as the ships came closer, but now the great cluster ahead loomed full before us, its myriads of flaming, thundering suns drenching all in our pilot room in their fierce, terrific glare. Straight ahead of us, at the mighty cluster's outmost edge, flamed a great double star among all the other thronging stars that made it up, two giant white suns separated only by a comparatively narrow gap. And straight toward that narrow gap our fleeing ship was heading.
Behind us now the hundred long oval ships were drawing into plain sight, their white-lit pilot rooms giving us brief glimpses inside of massed machinery and slender beings we could but half-glimpse that moved inside. From the foremost of those ships, now, there stabbed out toward us the broad, pale, ghostly beam of death, but as yet the gap between us was too wide for the beam to bridge, and we flashed onward still, the gleaming shapes of our pursuers leaping still closer. Before us now the whole firmament seemed a wild chaos of gigantic suns, as we raced straight in toward the mighty cluster, with ahead the narrow gap that separated the two giant white suns toward which we were heading.
Jhul Din gripped my shoulder, pointed ahead, shouted to me over the roar of our generators. "Unless we slacken speed we'll never make it through that gap without driving into one of the suns," he cried.
I shook my head. "It's death either way!" I yelled to him. "Our only chance is to drive between them at full speed."
Now before us the whole heavens seemed a single vast sheet of boiling white flame as we drove in toward the two mighty thundering suns, the gaps between them seeming no more than a narrow black cleft at the terrific velocity at which we were moving. At our topmost speed we rushed toward that narrow gap, the ships behind still leaping full upon our track, closing swiftly down upon us now. And now, as Korus Kan braced himself and held our controls still steady, we were flashing squarely in between the two gigantic suns. On either side of us they towered, thundering, boiling upright oceans of devouring, brilliant white flame, whose awful glare all but blinded us, seeming to fill all the universe about us with one great mass of raging fires. Out toward our onward-flashing ship there licked from the great suns on either side titanic tongues of flame bursting out toward us for millions of miles, huge prominences that could have licked up worlds like midges, but straight on between the walling fires our throbbing ship still flashed.
Now the hundred ships behind, still after us through that hell of light and flame, were racing down upon us even as we sped between the giant flaming suns, and now from behind shot shaft upon shaft of the pale death-beams, hardly to be seen in the awful blinding glare. As the beams sprang toward us, though, Korus Kan swerved to the left, and for a moment it seemed that we had swerved from death in one form only to meet it in another, since at our terrific speed we veered millions of miles in that moment toward the left gigantic sun. Its boiling fires were all about us, seemed to encompass us, and then just as it seemed that we were racing into the mighty glowing corona to our deaths Korus Kan had swerved our ship backward into the center of the narrow gap. And now we were reaching that gap's end, were passing from between the giant suns, and out into more open space inside the great cluster, with the pursuing ships again leaping forward to loose their deadly beams.
Out from between the two great suns we flashed, before us now the interior of the mighty cluster, a great swarm of flaming suns that thronged space all about us, and about many of which swung great families of planets, dozens of whirling worlds. Even as we shot into the interior of the great cluster, though, from between the two giant suns, the hundred pursuing craft had leaped forward upon us with one great burst of sudden speed, were behind us, on each side, all about us. It was the end, we knew, and there was an instant of sheer silence as we waited for that end, waited for the pale beams of death from the ships about us. But before they could loose those beams there flashed suddenly upon them from each side other ships, two mighty masses of ships like our own, that burst suddenly out upon our pursuers from behind the two great suns between which we had just come. Ships like our own! Ships long and slender and gleaming! Ships of the Interstellar Patrol, striking at the vanguard of the invaders in defense of our universe.
3: Death-Beam and Crimson Ray
Even as the great masses of ships on each side leapt out upon our pursuers, Korus Kan had glimpsed them, and had swung our own ship instantly around in a great curve. On each side of us, now, were the thousands of cruisers of the great patrol, and before us were the hundred ships that had chased us in toward the galaxy through space. Before those ships could recover from their surprise, before their occupants could realize the trap into which they had ventured, our whole vast fleet was leaping upon them from both sides, flashing down upon the hundred invading craft before they could turn from their onward flight.