In we drove, speeding now past the great Cancer cluster as we flashed at our utmost speed into the galaxy, its great ball of gathered suns flaring in the black heavens to our left as we sped inward. Behind came our pursuers, racing on close after us; and now, glancing back beyond them, I saw the whole mighty fleet of the invaders, still fully three thousand ships in number, moving in toward the galaxy also, toward the great Cancer cluster, with its swarming suns and thronging worlds, saw the great fleet slowing, slanting down toward those suns, those worlds, and knew then that these invaders, having annihilated the galaxy's fleet, were settling upon the suns and worlds of the Cancer cluster as a first foothold in our universe, a base from which they could subdue all that universe. Then their fleet had vanished from our distance-windows as we fled on, and of the score of our pursuers all but three had turned back to rejoin that fleet.
The three remaining ships, though, drove straight on our track, and swiftly were overhauling us, though inside the galaxy they dared not use all their tremendous speed. Yet remorselessly after us they came, and I knew that moments more would see our end unless we could escape them. Directly ahead of us, though, there flamed a small crimson sun, a dying, planetless star not far inward from the Cancer cluster, largening each moment before us as we drove on toward it with terrific speed. As I saw it a last plan flashed through my brain, and I turned to Korus Kan.
"Head straight toward that sun," I told him. "It's our only chance-to get in close and lose them in its corona."
He nodded grimly, swerving the ship a little, and now straight toward the red star we raced, Jhul Din and I gazing out with him toward it as we flashed on, and then behind to where the gleaming three ships of the invaders drove after us. Swiftly they were overtaking us, two close behind us and the remaining one a little behind the two, but ahead the crimson star was filling almost all the heavens, now, a great sea of fiery red flame that stretched above and beneath us, ahead, as though occupying all the firmament. Its glare was awful, now, for we were racing straight in toward the mighty corona of it, the glowing outer atmosphere of radiant heat about it in which, I knew, no ship, however heat-resistant, could live for more than a moment. On we raced, our cruiser creaking and swaying still from the effects of the collision with the ship we had smashed into, but flashing on with unabated speed.
Behind us, the three gleaming shapes of our pursuers were following with unslackened speed, too, gradually drawing nearer, the two foremost of those ships just behind us, now. Another moment and their death-beams would stab toward us, and though we might destroy one or even two of them the other would surely destroy us before we could turn to it, I knew. The heat, too, of the great star before us was penetrating into our ship, and full before us, not a dozen million miles ahead, glowed the great corona. On we flashed-on-on-and then, just as we were about to burst into the terrible, glowing corona, just as the two ships close behind us sprang closer to stab with their beams toward us, Korus Kan jerked the controls suddenly back, and instantly our ship shot upward in a great vertical rush, while beneath, before they could see and follow our change of course, the two racing oval ships pursuing us had flashed on and into the mighty glare of the corona. Then we glimpsed them shriveling, twisting, vanishing, in the awful heat there, while our own cruiser turned now away from the red sun.
Beneath we saw the single remaining oval ship turning, too, since it had been far enough behind the two to change its course in time to avoid the terrible corona. It seemed to pause, hesitate, and then, as though satisfied that our ship too had met death in the corona with its own two companions, it began to flash backward toward the galaxy's edge, toward the Cancer cluster where the mighty invading fleet had settled. And now, burning for revenge, our own cruiser was slanting back with it and down toward it, as it drove on unsuspectingly beneath. Another moment and we would be above it, would loose our red rays on it before ever it suspected our existence. I was breathing with relief at our escape, now, and heard an exulting cry from Jhul Din as he strode down into the cruiser's hull from the pilot room, to direct the ray-tubes there, but the next moment all our triumph vanished, for from our cruiser's hull, toward its battered prow, there came suddenly a succession of appalling cracks.
Standing suddenly tense we listened, and then, as there came from beneath a prolonged, cracking roar, I heard shouts of fear from our crew, and then Jhul Din had burst up into the pilot room from beneath.
"The cruiser's walls are giving!" he cried. "That collision with the oval ship when we smashed our way out strained and wrenched loose the whole prow and side-walls-the cruiser can't hold together for five minutes more!"
There was a stunned silence in the little room then, a silence in which it seemed that all the disasters that had befallen us were crowding together upon us, overpowering us. This was the end, I knew. Within minutes more the walls about us would collapse and in the infinite cold and emptiness of interstellar space we would meet our deaths. We were hours away from the nearest friendly planet, with all our companion ships destroyed. It was the end, and for a moment I bowed to the inevitable, stood in stunned despair awaiting that end. But then, as my eyes fell upon the oval ship beneath, toward which our collapsing cruiser was still slanting downward, I saw that upon its broad metal back was the round circle of a space-door, like the double space-doors of our own ship, and as I saw that, all the ancient combativeness that has carried men out into the remotest of the galaxy's depths surged up in me, and I wheeled around to the other two.
"Order all our crew down to the cruiser's lower space-door," I cried, "and have an emergency space-suit issued to each of them."
They stared at me, strangely, tensely. "What are you going to do?" asked Jhul Din, at last, and my answer came out in a shout:
"We're going to do what never yet has been done in all the battles between the stars!" I told him. "We're going to put our lives on one last mad chance and board that enemy ship in mid-space!"
4: A Struggle Between the Stars
A moment there was silence in the pilot room, a silence of sheer surprise, in which my two lieutenants gazed at me in utter amazement, and then from Jhul Din came a great shout.
"It's a chance," he cried. "If we can do it we'll escape yet."
"Down to the space-door at once, then," I told him. "The ship can't last for seconds now."
For even then there had come to our ears another long, cracking roar as our battered walls gave still farther. Now Jhul Din was racing down from the pilot room to assemble the crew, and now our cruiser was slanting still farther down toward the long, gleaming oval ship beneath. Down we slanted, until our own swaying cruiser hung at a distance of a score of feet above the enemy ship, which, believing us destroyed, never dreamed of our presence as we raced on through space at the same speed as itself. And now Korus Kan hastily set the automatic controls in the pilot room that would hold our cruiser at the same speed and course without guiding hand, and then we too hurled ourselves down the narrow stair, through the big power room where the great generators were still throbbing on, down through the succession of compartments in the cruiser's hull until we had reached the long, low room that lay at its very bottom, and in the floor of which was set the cruiser's lower space-door.
In the long room all our crew was gathered now, with Jhul Din at their head, a hundred odd in number, and a strange enough aggregation they were, drawn as they were from the far-different races of the galaxy's peopled stars. Octopus-beings from Vega, great plant-men from Capella, spider-shapes from Mizar-these and a score or more of differing forms and shapes stood before me, listening in disciplined silence as I briefly explained our plan. About us the walls were wrenching and cracking fearfully, but when I had finished those before me raised a fierce shout, and then each of us was hastily climbing into the emergency space-suits which were kept always in all interstellar ships in case outside repairs to it were necessary in mid-space.
A moment more and we all stood attired in the hermetically sealed, clumsy-loo
king suits of thick, flexible metal, with head-pieces of metal in which were transparent vision-plates. As we donned them each pressed the button which set the little air-generators inside each suit pouring forth their supply of fresh air and purifying the breathed air; and then, with a swift glance around that showed each in his suit, I motioned to Jhul Din and at once the big Spican pressed the stud in the wall that sent the round space-door in the floor sliding open.
We could not feel through our insulating suits the tremendous cold that instantly invaded the ship, but we heard plainly the swift, terrific swish of air about us as it rushed out of the ship into the mighty void outside. Now, looking down through the open door, we could see a score of feet beneath the broad metal back of the great oval ship, still racing on unsuspectingly beneath us. I turned back to the crew about me, saw that each had gripped one of the metal bars that were to be our only weapons in this attempt, since the use of rays would destroy the ship beneath, which was our only hope of life. Then, reaching forth again to the switchcase on the wall, Jhul Din at my motion threw off the cruiser's gravity-control, so that the attraction-plates built into the floor beneath us, which pulled us always downward and enabled us to walk upright and normally inside the cruiser, no longer pulled us. Instead, though, we were being pulled down now by the gravitational force of the racing ship beneath and a step through the open door would send any of us hurtling down toward that ship.
Now I gave one last glance around, even while the cruiser's walls cracked terribly again, and then swung myself over the edge of the opening in the floor, hanging by my hands from it and swinging there in the infinite void of interstellar space a score of feet above the oval ship's broad metal back. It seemed, that moment that I swung there, a time of endless length, and surely never before had any hung thus between two ships racing on through the void. Then, as another cracking roar came from the walls about me, I loosed my hold upon the edge and hurtled down through empty space toward the back of the ship below.
Down, down-that fall seemed endless as I rushed down through space, but unimpeded as I was by air-resistance it was but an instant before I had slammed down on the ship's broad back, lying motionless for an instant and then rising carefully to a sitting position. Just above me hung our racing cruiser, the opening in its bottom directly overhead, and in another moment Korus Kan had followed me, striking the ship's back beside me while I gripped him and held him tightly. Then came one of the crew, and another, and another, until in a moment the last of them was dropping down among us, Jhul Din alone remaining above. He stepped toward the opening, to lower himself and drop down to us likewise, but even as he did so I saw the great walls of the cruiser above collapsing and buckling inward as they gave at last. I motioned frantically to Jhul Din as the walls collapsed about him, saw him give one startled glance around, and then as the cruiser's sides crumpled up about him he ran forward and leapt cleanly through the opening in the floor, hurtling down toward us and striking full in our midst, just as the crumpled cruiser above, the power of its generators gone with its collapse, jerked sharply out of sight toward the crimson sun behind, hurtling away from us a twisted wreck of metal.
* * *
It was with something of a tightness in my throat that I saw the wreck of our familiar, faithful ship drive away from us, but I turned toward our own desperate situation. We were clinging to the back of the great oval ship as it drove on toward the Cancer cluster, with above and all about us the blackness of the void, and the galaxy's flaming suns. Ahead shone the gathered suns of the great cluster, and I knew that we must capture the ship soon if at all; so now, half creeping and half walking, we made our way along the great ship's back toward the round space-door set midway along that back. In a moment we were clustered about it, and found it closed tightly from within, as I had expected. Instantly, though, we set to work on it with the metal bars and tools we had brought with us, drilling down through the thick metal of the door while we clung, like a hundred odd tiny mites, upon the mighty ship's back as it flashed on and on.
What might lie in the ship beneath, what manner of beings might these terrible invaders be, we could not even guess, but it was our one chance to penetrate inside, and frantically we worked. Within moments more we had drilled through in a dozen places, were swinging aside the great bolts that held the door closed inside, and then were sliding it open and dropping swiftly down inside. We heard a little rush of air outward as the door opened, and knew that this ship was inhabited by air-breathing beings, at least, and then we found ourselves in the room beneath the space-door, a bare little vestibule chamber in whose side was a single square door.
Before opening this, however, we closed the round space-door above us, plugging the holes we had drilled in it by driving in sections of metal bar, and then I turned toward the door in the wall, felt carefully around it, and finally pressed a small white plate inset beside it, at which it slid silently aside. We stepped through it, bars raised ready for action. We were in a corridor, a long corridor apparently running the length of the great oval ship, but quite empty for the moment. The throbbing of great generators was loud in our ears, a throbbing much like that in our own ships but with another unfamiliar beating sound mingled with it. Silently we gazed about, then began to make our way down the corridor toward the ship's front end, toward the pilot room at its nose, stopping first to divest ourselves silently of the heavy space-suits, and then starting on.
Now we had come to an open door in the corridor's side, and peering cautiously through it we saw inside a long room holding a score or more of great, cylindrical mechanisms from which arose the throbbing and beating of the oval ship's operation. About these mechanisms were moving some two dozen of the ship's occupants, and as our eyes fell upon them we all but gasped aloud, so utterly strange and alien in shape were they even to us, who held strange shapes enough in our own gathering. Many and many a strange race had we of the Patrol seen in our long journeys through the galaxy, but all these were familiar and commonplace beside the shapes that moved in the room before us. For they were serpent-people.
Serpent people. Long, slender shapes of wriggling pale flesh, each perhaps ten feet in length and a foot in diameter, without arms or legs of any kind, writhing swiftly from place to place snakelike, and coiling an end of their strange bodies about any object which they wished to grip. Each end of the long, cylindrical bodies was cut squarely off, as it were, and in one such flat end of each were the only features-a pair of bulging, many-lensed eyes like those of an insect, big and glassy and unwinking, and a small black opening below that was the only orifice for their breathing. These were the beings who had come out of outer space to attack our universe! These were the beings who had annihilated the galaxy's fleet and were preparing now to seize the galaxy itself.
I turned from my horror-stricken contemplation of them to Jhul Din and Korus Kan, close behind me. "The pilot room," I whispered. "We'll make for it-get the ship's controls."
They nodded silently, and silently we stole past the open door and down the long corridor, toward the door at its end that we knew must lead into the pilot room at the ship's nose. Past other doors we crept, all of them fortunately closed, and as we stole on toward the door at the corridor's end I began to hope that at last our luck had turned. But ironically, even as I hoped, the door at the corridor's end, not a score of feet ahead, slid suddenly aside, and out of it, out of the pilot room beyond it, came one of the writhing serpent-creatures. It stopped short on seeing us, then gave vent to a strange, hissing cry, a high, sibilant call utterly strange to my ears, but at the sound of which the doors all along the corridor behind us slid swiftly open, while through them scores of the serpent-beings writhed out, and upon us.
"The pilot room!" I yelled, above the sudden hissing cries of the serpent-creatures and the shouts of our own crew. "Head for it, Jhul Din!"
Down the corridor we leapt, and out from the pilot room there came to meet us a half-dozen of the serpent-creatures, while one remained in
side at the controls still. Then they were rushing toward us, and as they reached us were coiling about us, endeavoring to crush us by encircling us with their bodies and coiling with terrific power about us. As they did so, though, our own metal bars were crashing down among them, sending them to the corridor's floor in masses of crushed flesh as we plunged on toward the pilot room. Now we were through them, had crushed them before us, and were leaping through the door, the single serpent-creature inside wheeling to face us. Before he could spring upon us, though, Jhul Din had lifted him high above his head and then had flung him far down the corridor, where he struck against the wall and fell crushed to the floor. Then Korus Kan was leaping to the controls, swiftly scanning them and then twisting and shifting them, heading the racing ship around in a great curve, away from the Cancer cluster ahead and back in toward the galaxy's center, while Jhul Din and I now sprang back down the corridor to where our crew was struggling fiercely with the hordes of serpent-creatures rushing up from all parts of the ship.
Down that corridor, and down another, through rooms and halls and twisting stairways, down through all the great ship the battle raged, the serpent-creatures leaping and coiling about us with the courage of despair while we strode among them, metal bars smashing down in great strokes, mowing them down before us. Despite their overpowering numbers they were no match for us in such hand-to-hand fighting, and they dared not use ray-tubes, like ourselves, lest they destroy their own ship about them. So we forced them on, ever sending them down in crushed, lifeless masses, as they gradually gave way before us.
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