"They brought them down to this world's surface, those inside them helpless in the darkness against these people of darkness. Almost all inside the captured ships they slew with the pain-producers, but a few who they thought would be useful to them they saved and prisoned as I was prisoned in the building of the rulers.
"Soon afterward they repeated this process, closing the control and drawing in new swarms of ships from outside the cloud. And again they did the same thing and with the same result. The fourth time they captured but one ship, your own, but this can have made no difference to them, for their first three operations had brought them in thousands of great interstellar ships in which all the eyeless hordes could be contained.
"Already they had almost completed the refitting of these ships, fitting them with their vibration-guiding devices, and also with the mechanisms they will take with them for their conquest of the galaxy. These are mechanisms each of which can destroy all light for a vast space around it by neutralizing the light-vibrations even as is done by natural forces here in the cloud.
"And with these they will conquer the galaxy inevitably. For they need but settle upon a world and with their mechanisms or one of them destroy all light in and around it. Plunged in absolute darkness, its blind peoples will be unable to strike back at the eyeless creatures who, used to darkness and at home in it, can wipe out the others at their leisure with the pain-producers.
"Already their last preparations are being finished, already their hordes streaming toward the waiting masses of interstellar ships. It was that knowledge that made me desperate, and in desperation I managed to escape from the building of the rulers that was my prison. I have kept always with me the ultra-violet sight-glasses, and with a pair of them was able to elude the creatures, hoping to steal a cruiser and get out to the galaxy to warn it. But I could not get near any of the ships, and in going through the city in a vain hope of doing so I saw you battling with and killing that creature and came to you."
When Zat Zanat had finished his strange tale, I was silent for a moment, gazing out into the narrow violet-lit street beside which we crouched.
"You think then that the only hope is to steal a cruiser and get out of the cloud to warn the galaxy before the attack comes?" I asked.
He nodded quickly. "What other hope is there? Nothing can halt this invasion of theirs, for before an hour more is past, it may well be, their hordes will be pouring out of the cloud in their cruisers. You can hear them making ready now."
"But what of my friends? I can't escape and leave Jhul Din and Korus Kan here, or the others either."
He thought for a moment. "For your cruiser's crew there is no hope." he said, "for the rulers would order them slain at once. If your two friends seemed of any importance, though, there is a chance that they would have been let live for a while, prisoned there in the ruler's building."
"Then it's for us to get them out," I said, and he laughed shortly.
"That's all," he agreed. "Well, one thing seems hardly more hopeless than another, and we may as well try it. But we must get your friends soon if ever, for these creatures of darkness will surely kill their prisoners to the last one before they leave."
We stood up, then ventured cautiously into the narrow street. Looking along its violet-lit length I could see in the broader street that crossed it innumerable dark shapes hastening this way and that. The buildings on each side of the streets were tall rectangular ones a few hundred feet in height, their walls smooth and black like the paving of the streets. They had doors but no windows whatever, seeming like great boxes. It was with an effort that I remembered that in unending darkness there was small need for windows.
Zat Zanat pointed out over the city to a great block-like building that towered above all others, and on whose top I could make out the shapes of resting space-ships.
"The building of the rulers," he whispered. "It's there your friends are, if they still live."
"Lead on, then," I said, and without further words we started down the narrow way.
As we came toward the broader avenue that crossed it we went more carefully, and it was here that I had my first real glimpse of the creatures of darkness with whom I had struggled and from whom and among whom I had fled. They were much as my touching hands had informed me, great upright bodies of dark flesh moving on two flap-like lower limbs and with two similar arms. In the upper part of the body the only features were the small opening of the mouth and great cup-like ears set on each side of it.
As I watched, with something of a recurrence of my former horror, I saw that the creatures seemed to judge all their movements by hearing, avoiding one another when they heard the sound of steps, and avoiding walls and other obstacles evidently by listening to the echo of their own steps. The product of evolution in the unending darkness of the cosmic cloud, hearing meant to them all that sight could mean to children of light.
Zat Zanat, making a sign of caution to me, stepped forward and led the way across the border street, at a time when the stream of eyeless creatures had lessened. As we approached its other side, though, the approach of two of the monsters bearing a section of machinery between them forced us to halt lest our steps be heard. The two passed but inches from us, and unutterably strange and terrifying it was to stand silent there in the violet-lit street with those creatures flopping past. It took an effort to remember that when we made no sound they could not perceive us.
As we moved on I glanced ahead and back and saw that over all the city as far as the eye could reach, in the violet light which was in reality not light, streams of the creatures were pouring toward great square open spaces in the city where rested the thousands of captured interstellar ships. The last pieces of mechanism were being loaded into these, it seemed, and the monsters themselves were pouring into them. They were on the point of making their start out through the cloud to fall upon the galaxy's worlds!
The sight spurred us forward. Halting now and then and freezing motionless as statues to allow some of the darkness creatures to pass around or near us, we made our way through the streets until we were nearing the great building of the rulers. By then the greater part of the city's hordes had poured toward and into the massed interstellar ships, and because of that we went forward more quickly.
Zat Zanat turned now and then to whisper caution, though, and the third time that he did so I saw his eyes widen suddenly in terror behind his glasses, saw him racing back toward me with arms outstretched. With swift sense of panic I made to whirl around but before I could do so two great flap-arms had closed on me from behind, and in grasping my head knocked loose the glasses from my eyes.
Instantly I was plunged into the most profound darkness, and then as there came a rush of feet was released by the creature that had held me and sent staggering off into the darkness. I heard a terrific struggle going on in the darkness beside me, knew that Zat Zanat and the monster were locked in death-grips, but was helpless to aid my friend in the blindness that was upon me.
Rushing toward the sound of battle I was knocked back and down by a great blow that caught my face. I pawed frantically along the street in search of the glasses I had lost, heard over the scuffle in the dark the sound of Zat Zanat's gasps for breath and a smothered flute-like cry from his antagonist.
Abruptly the sounds of struggle ceased, and somewhere in the darkness a heavy weight thudded against the paving. Which of the two had won? I waited statue-like for the answer until I was grasped by the shoulders, and whirled around in sudden terror. But as I did so a hand was again pressing the eye-disks against my eyes and as the whole scene sprang from deep darkness into violet light once more I saw that it was Zat Zanat, disheveled and panting for breath, and that the other lay dead upon the paving.