Down with them swooped our own ship now, and we shouted aloud as we saw from all the swooping ships about us, as from our own, myriad brilliant shafts of the brilliant red ray flashing down and striking the enemy ships ahead and below. Within an instant, it seemed, half those racing ships had flared and vanished in brilliant bursts of crimson light, while the rest had dipped and turned in a wild effort to escape. Back toward the two great white suns they raced, seeking to escape between them into outer space again, to rejoin the oncoming main swarm of their great fleet, but down before and ahead of them leapt our Patrol cruisers, the red rays again whirling and cutting in great circles of death. And now as they vanished one by one beneath those rays, struggling still through space toward the two great suns, the death beams of the remaining ships sprang savagely up toward us, and I saw cruisers here and there in our own fleet driving aimlessly off, smashing into one another and whirling blindly away as the beams wiped out all life in them.
But now we were leaping after the fleeing ships between the great suns again, and as we shot after them through those terrific walls of flame our rays again took toll of them; so that as we flashed out from between the two mighty suns and into outer space once more but a scant half-dozen of them remained, and these leapt instantly forward and out into the blackness of outer space to rejoin the main body of their approaching fleet, while we in turn sprang after them in hot pursuit, though our ships were not capable of the tremendous speeds of those invading ones.
"Score for us!" cried Jhul Din as our ships flashed on. "We've all but wiped out those hundred."
"Wait," I told him. "The main body of their fleet's coming on toward us-"
Even as I spoke I saw the ship of Lacq Larus, Chief of the Patrol, the flag-ship of our fleet, slackening its speed ahead of us, and a moment later there came from a speech-instrument beside me his clear, unruffled voice:
"All ships halt and mass in battle formation!" he ordered; and at once, in answer to that command, our flashing ships slowed and stopped, forming instantly into three thick, short columns and hanging motionless in space.
On the space-chart above, now, we could see the mass of thousands of dots that was our fleet hanging motionless a little out from the galaxy's edge, and could see, too, a little outward from that mass of dots, another and equally large mass, that moved slowly in toward us, the great swarm that was the invading fleet. Already the few fleeing survivors of our hundred pursuers had raced back into that main swarm, and now, moving ever more slowly but coming steadily forward, it was driving through space toward us. The great swarm was moving still in a triangular formation, the triangle's apex toward us, and now at last, as we stared forward into the blackness, we made out light-points ahead, a vast swarm of them in that steady triangular formation, moving deliberately toward us.
Slowly now those light-points were largening, were changing into great, gleaming ships as their fleet came on toward us. Ever more slowly it moved, now at but a fraction of a light-speed, for it was evident that they, like us, sought no fight-and-run skirmish but a battle to the finish. At last they had stopped, had halted just out of ray-reach ahead and were hanging motionless in space like ourselves, facing us. And then, for a moment, it seemed as though about us was an unbroken stillness and silence, as the two mighty fleets, numbering each fully five thousand ships, faced each other there in space.
I think that never in all space and time could there have been a moment as strange as that one, when the mighty fleet of our galaxy lay prow to prow with this other mighty fleet from the dark, unguessed mysteries of outer space. All about us lay the cold, lightless blackness of the eternal void, with the great galaxy's colossal rampart of flaming suns stretched across the heavens behind us alone blazing in that blackness, the great Cancer cluster at its edge, just behind us, flaming with all the glory of its mass of gathered suns. A single instant that silence and stillness reigned in the stupendous scene about us, an instant that to our strained nerves seemed endless, and then a sharp order rang from the speech-instrument beside me, and as one our great fleet leapt forward while the opposing fleet sprang to meet us. The battle was on.
I saw the enemy fleet flashing straight toward us, the apex of its triangle pointed full at our center, and knew instinctively that it meant to cut us into halves with the great wedge that was itself. But as it flashed straight toward us and upon us there rang another order from the instrument at my side, and instantly our three short columns of ships veered to the right, changing in a moment into one long column, which instead of meeting the onrushing triangle flashed along its side. As we shot past thus I had a lightning glimpse of the masses of countless oval ships racing by, glimpsed too a score or more of ships at the center of their fleet that seemed not oval but round and disk-like in shape, and then forgot all else as from all our ships there burst the brilliant red rays, raking the side of their fleet with a deadly fire as we flashed past it. Then scores upon scores of their ships were vanishing in crimson flares of light as those rays found them, and though their death-beams found our own ships here and there as we flashed by, the great mass of their ships dared not loose their beams upon us lest they destroy their own ships, so skillful had been our maneuver.
Only a moment did it last, that passing of the two fleets with red ray and death-beam crossing, and then we were past them, were turning and circling and racing back upon them to deliver another blow. Ahead we could see the enemy fleet turning and racing back to meet us, with beyond them the great suns of the galaxy flaming in the blackness of space, and again we leapt straight toward them there in the abysmal void; but this time they had anticipated our maneuver and as we swerved to the right of them their whole great fleet swerved right also, so that in order to avoid a head-on collision with their fleet we were forced to swerve still farther to the right, our long column racing along through space now parallel to the galaxy's edge, with the enemy ships strung in a similar column between us and the galaxy, racing along with us through space at the same speed as ourselves, their pale ghostly beams whirling toward us even as our crimson shafts cut through the void toward them.
Ships on each side were vanishing, now, some flaring in wild explosions of red light and disappearing as the scarlet rays found them, others driving crazily and aimlessly away as the pale beams wiped out in an instant all the crews inside them. But now we found ourselves at a disadvantage, for our enemy's gleaming ships could hardly be made out against the flaring suns of the galaxy, beyond them, while our own glittering cruisers stood out clearly against the darkness of outer space. It was an advantage of which they took swift use, for now the broad pale beams were reaching toward us in increasing numbers as we flashed along, while our own rays were all but ineffective, since, blinded as we were by the flaring suns behind the opposing ships, we could only loose the rays at random.
On still we raced, along the galaxy's edge, the great Cancer cluster dropping behind us now as we sped on, our two great fleets striking and grappling with each other even as they flashed on. Black space and flaming suns, pale ray and red, oval ships and long cruisers, all mingled and whirled in that wild scene like the features of some tortured dream, but dream it was none to us, flashing on with our fleet while in the hull beneath our crew loosed their red rays of death upon the chance-seen enemy ships that flashed between us and the dazzling suns. At an order flashed from the Chief's flag-ship our whole fleet increased to its utmost velocity, striving to pass the enemy fleet and get between it and the galaxy again, but the immeasurable speed of these great invaders from outer space defeated our efforts. At the same speed as ourselves they raced forward, keeping always between us and the suns, and when we slowed our speed suddenly to fall behind them they instantly did likewise.