"It's a vibration-wall." I cried to my companions. "A great wall of etheric vibrations enclosing all this universe."
For I saw now that that was the great barrier's nature. It was a mighty shell of perpetual vibrations in the ether itself, extending all about the universe before us, allowing light and electro-magnetic communication waves to pass through it, unchanged, but excluding and holding out the vibrations of matter, by meeting them, as I knew must be the case, with a vibration of equal frequency which opposed them, reflected them back, forming a barrier more impenetrable than any of solid matter, yet one all but invisible, extending about all this mighty universe, excluding from it for all time all matter from outside. Too, as I was later to learn, the great vibration-wall was impenetrable to the heat-vibrations, reflecting those of its dying suns that struck it back into the universe inside. It was for this purpose that the vast barrier had been erected, as the suns of the serpent-people failed, to prevent the escape of any of the precious heat-radiations of their few living suns, and also to place about all their universe a wall impenetrable to all invaders. Set in the ether about their universe eons before, the vibrations that made up the great barrier were perpetual and undying, a vast wall of defense about the serpent-universe.
We were flashing close along the mighty, flickering barrier's edge, now, and the speed of our ships slackened swiftly as there loomed far ahead in space two great, dark bulks starred here and there with points of white light. Moments more and they had grown to immense size as we neared them, and now we saw that these were mighty, square-walled structures of gleaming metal, each a full five thousand feet in length along each of its four sides, and half again that much in height: two colossal metal forts that floated motionless there in space, set directly in the great wall of flickering blue vibrations, and between which there was a great opening in that wall, a clear space in which I divined was the single opening in all the great wall. And flanking that opening on either side hung the massive metal structures, upheld there in the void, as I guessed, by mighty generators like those of our own ships, castles of metal whose countless deadly death-beam tubes commanded the opening between them and from whose white-lit windows the serpent-garrisons of them gazed out upon us, great space-forts hung there at the vibration-wall's one opening, guarding the gates of a universe.
In toward the narrow opening between the great forts swept our ships, and as they moved slowly inward there flashed a challenging signal of lights from those forts, answered at once by similar signals from our ships. Then we were driving inward, between the towering metal castles on either side, flashing in through the great vibration-wall and into the dying galaxy itself. With generators again humming at a high speed our half-hundred ships swept on, into the thronging thousands of dead and dying suns that swarmed before us, inside the colossal protecting shell of the great vibration-wall.
All about us now were great hordes of swarming dark-stars that we could but dimly glimpse, as our ships flashed between them, vast throngs of black and burned-out suns that outnumbered the few still flaming stars by hundreds to one. Here and there about us, though, as we swept on, we could make out a red sun or two, some comparatively brilliant and others so dark and far gone that they seemed only like giant cooling embers in the black heavens. Clusters there were, too, of which all but one or two suns would be black and dead, and as we flashed on into the depths of this universe we began to realize at last what tremendous necessity it had been that had sent the serpent-peoples driving out through the limitless void in search of a new universe.
Far ahead, though, there loomed before us as we sped on a trio of giant crimson suns more brilliant than any we had yet seen in this dying universe, and which hung at its center, each of them as large as great Canopus itself in our own galaxy. In a great triangle they hung there, two of them much brighter than the other, a mighty triplet of titanic waning suns that seemed like the dying monarchs of the vast and dying realm about them. It was down toward these three great suns that our ships were slanting now, down toward the space at the center of their great triangle, and now we saw that in that space there swung a single mighty world, a dark, immense planet of size inconceivable, almost as large as the three great suns at whose center it turned, and whose light and heat fell perpetually upon it.
* * *
Broader and broader the great turning world was growing as we slanted down toward it, until it lay like a tremendous dark shield beneath us, filling all the heavens below. As our ships sank still lower toward it, speed swiftly slackening, we began to make out details on its surface, to make out what seemed to be a vast mass of palely shining structures, towers and walls and vast, terraced buildings that glowed all with pale blue light, indescribably ghostly in appearance as they soared into the dusky, crimson light of the three encircling suns. Here and there through the masses of these blue-shining structures ran streets, narrow openings in which swarmed great masses of the writhing serpent-people. And as I gazed down upon this tremendous city, upon the countless glowing structures of pale blue light that made it up, my astonishment at what I saw broke from me in a startled cry.
"This city!" I exclaimed. "Its buildings are of vibrations like the great wall around their universe."
A city of vibrations. A mighty city that covered apparently all this giant planet, and yet whose every structure was built, not of matter but of etheric-vibrations that were matter-resistant like the great wall, vibrations infinitely more lasting and impenetrable than any matter, and projected upward at will into buildings of any shape or size. Here and there in the mighty city, even as we sped down over it, we could see buildings vanishing instanteously, could see other mighty buildings springing as instantly into being, all of the same pale blue light, reared or destroyed instantly by snapping on or off the vibrations that were projected upward to form them.
Now, as our ships slanted down over the vast mass of pale-glowing structures that stretched from horizon to horizon, I saw that ahead and beneath there lay amid those structures a mighty circular clearing, scores of miles in diameter and paved smoothly with the same pale blue force as the city's buildings and streets. In this vast circle, ranged regularly in long rows, rested thousands upon countless thousands of gleaming oval space-ships, in all stages of completion. Over and among them, swarming ceaselessly through them and toiling to complete them, moved mighty hordes of the serpent-creatures, armed with great tools of strange design, the thunderous clamor of their work coming up to us through the great planet's air. It was the immense workshop of the serpent-races that lay beneath us, I knew, in which their hordes labored ceaselessly to complete the mighty fleet that was to carry them through the void to our universe.
It was not the ranks of half-built ships, though, nor the toiling throngs among them, that held our gaze in the vast circular clearing over which we were racing. It was the colossal shape that loomed at the clearing's center and that occupied fully half the area of its vast circle, a stupendous metal cone-structure that rose in the air before us for fully a score of miles, the diameter of its base almost as great, a gigantic, smooth-sided mountain of metal towering there above the countless ships and workers in the great clearing around it, and above the far-stretching city about that clearing. Past its side our ships were speeding, and we could see now that about it and upon it there labored other great masses of serpent-creatures, swarming in and out of the heavy doors that swung open in its sides at various levels, and laboring upon the great masses of machinery that we could glimpse inside. Some of these, we saw, were great generators like those of our ships, making it clear that the vast cone was intended to race through space. Then, as Korus Kan's keen eyes peered toward and into its interior as we flashed past, he turned toward us, startled.
"It's a colossal death-beam projector!" he exclaimed. "One that can move through space like their ships-and that can stab forth a death-beam of unthinkable size. With that, when they complete it, they can wipe out all life on a whole world with a single flash of the s
tupendous beam."
Stunned, we gazed toward it as our ships flashed past. The tremendous cone itself was apparently complete, from vast base to the truncated, flattened tip. The generators that were to move it through space were apparently all installed, and the great hordes of serpent-workers who swarmed in it now were beginning to place in it the massed mechanisms for the production of the colossal death-beam, which would be projected up through a tremendous, hollow tube or tunnel running up from the great cone's interior to the great, round opening at its truncated tip. The terrific beam, generated in that interior, would flash out of that opening at the top in whatever direction the vast cone itself was headed in space, would flash through space with its tremendous power for immense distances, spreading out fanwise and expanding in every direction as it flashed on, until it struck the planet at which it was aimed, enveloping all that planet in its ghostly glow and wiping out instantly all life upon it. This, then, was the great weapon of irresistible power which the captured records of the serpent-creatures had mentioned. And irresistible it was, I saw now; for with it, when completed, the serpent-creatures could sally forth and with one sweep of the colossal beam destroy all fleets of space-ships opposing them by annihilating their crews, could descend upon our universe and with that same great beam wipe out all life upon world after world of our galaxy, swiftly, resistlessly, until in all our universe was left no living thing except themselves.
But now, even as we stared in horror and amazement at the vast cone, our ships were driving past it, still over the great clearing filled with close-ranked masses of the half-built ships, until before and beneath us lay the mighty circle's edge. And now we saw that beyond it, touching it, there lay another smaller circle of clear space, amid the vast city's crowding structures of blue light, a circle from which throngs of space-ships were constantly rising and upon which others were descending, it being obviously one of the points of departure and arrival for all ships. Down toward it our own ships were speeding, slower with every moment, until at last they had landed at this smaller circle's edge, our own closest to that edge, the pale-glowing mighty buildings towering up just beside us.
Then the space-doors of our ships were clanging open, and their occupants were writhing forth from them. A moment and the door of our prison snapped open; then, herded forward by a half-dozen of serpent-creatures armed with small death-beam tubes, we were marched out of the ship and onto the smooth pavement of blue force that covered this circle also. There, massed together, we were halted for a moment, and took the opportunity to stare about. From the ships behind us, just landed, the last of the serpent-crews had writhed forth, passing across to a narrow street that opened through the mass of towering, shimmering buildings before us, from the circular clearing's edge. We ourselves were being marched toward that street, now, the great oval ships lying empty and deserted behind us, and at sight of their open doors I turned and twitched the arm of Jhul Din, walking beside me.
"It's a chance in a million to get away," I whispered, to him and to Korus Kan. "If we can overpower these guards and get back inside our ship-"
They turned toward me, startled, and then as they glanced back toward the deserted ships their eyes lit with excitement. A moment more and I had whispered my plan, glancing toward the half-dozen guards behind us, and then the next moment we put it into effect, Jhul Din suddenly slumping to the blue-force pavement and lying motionless, sprawled as though suddenly stricken down. It was the most primitive of ruses, and I could only hope in that moment that our guards might not have had experience of it. The next moment, though, they had seen the motionless form of the big Spican, and with a natural perplexity had writhed forward toward it, holding their beam-tubes, though, gripped in the coils of their strange bodies, alertly toward ourselves. Beside the big crustacean they halted, tubes trained still upon us as they inspected him. Then the next moment the Spican had reached out his great arms with inconceivable swiftness and suddenness, grasping the serpent-guards beside him before they could turn their tubes down upon him, threshing with them in sudden fierce battle as we rushed forward to aid him.
The next moment we were all struggling there with those guards in a wild m�l�e, their deadly tubes knocked from their grasp by Jhul Din in his leap upon them. With the strength and fury of despair we flung ourselves upon them, rending their writhing bodies to fragments as they sought to coil about us, our hoarse shouts rising above their own hissing cries of fear and alarm. In but a moment, it seemed, we were crushing the last of them beneath us, Jhul Din and one or two of our crew leaping already toward the open door of our ship, while we staggered up to follow. But as we did so there came from behind us other hissing cries, and we whirled about, then stopped short. For back from the street into which they had just gone were rushing the serpent-crews of the ships behind us, a resistless horde that was flashing upon us with the ghostly death-beams of their tubes stabbing full toward us.
8: The Hall of the Living Dead
Racing forward as they were, the serpent-creatures rushing upon us could only loose their death-beams at chance upon us, and it was that alone that saved us, the deadly rays going wide except for one that struck and annihilated two of our party in its wild whirling. Then, before they could loose the beams again upon us, we had rushed forward to meet them and were among them; while at the same moment I shouted hoarsely over my shoulder to Jhul Din, who with his three followers had reached now the open door of our ship, behind us, and who now had hesitated for an instant as he saw our new foes rush down upon us.
"Go on, Jhul Din!" I cried. "Get away in the ship-we'll hold them till you get clear-"
Then we were meeting the serpent-creatures before us, and the next few moments we seemed surrounded, weighed down, by a solid mass of writhing bodies at which we struck crazily with the last of our strength. Even as we struggled wildly, though, I heard above the shouts and hissing cries about me the clang of the ship's space-doors, the swift humming of its generators; then as I staggered clear of my opponents for a moment I saw the great craft, with Jhul Din at the controls in its pilot room, lifting suddenly from the clearing, slanting steeply upward at immense speed, vanishing almost instantly in the crimson sunlight above. I yelled with exultation at the sight, and then was pulled down once more by my opponents, held tightly with Korus Kan and the others, as with wild hissing cries the greater part of the serpent-creatures rushed to their ships.
A moment more and two score of their craft were shooting sharply upward in hot pursuit of Jhul Din and his fleeing ship. Held tightly by our serpent-captors, we waited with them the return of the pursuing ships. Would they catch the big Spican? Slowly the minutes dragged past, while in the gulf of space above us, we knew, Jhul Din and his three followers were racing, twisting, fighting against that remorseless pursuit that would track him by the space-charts. Then at last, after a wait that seemed eternities in length, the dark, long shapes of the ships that had pursued him drove down from above and landed beside us, their serpent-crews emerging, but without trace of Jhul Din or his ship. Whether he had met his end beneath their death-beams, we could not say nor guess.
I knew, though, that they would hardly have given up the pursuit unsuccessfully so soon, and it was with doubt and fear in my heart that I rose now in response to the motioned commands of our captors. Guarding us now with a score or more of death-beam tubes they marched us across the circle toward the street that opened from it, and then down that street's length, between the mighty structures of blue force on either side. Half-transparent as were those buildings of pale blue light, we could see in them all the various floors and levels, as though in buildings of blue glass, and on those levels great ranks of half-glimpsed mechanisms tended by moving, writhing throngs of serpent-beings. Other throngs of them moved about us in the narrow street, from building to building, passing and repassing around us as we marched along.
To these, though, and to the buildings about us we paid but small attention; for at the end of the narrow street d
own which we were marching there loomed a great blue-shining structure of the same vibration as the others, but which dwarfed them by its tremendous size. Its vast, terraced sides slanted up for level upon mighty level, and as we neared it we saw that the street itself ended in it, passing through the high, great doorway before us into the shining structure's interior. In and out of it were pouring hordes of the serpent-creatures, and into it we were marched by our guards, through the great hall inside and on through a succession of other corridors in which writhed serpent-throngs. Through the open doors of the rooms along those corridors, as we passed by them, I could see serpent-creatures grouped about low, desk-like platforms, could see massed rows of great mechanisms that seemed tabulating or recording machines of some sort, saw other great rooms filled with flexible metal rolls like those we had captured with our oval ship, great collections of written records, and realized that this huge building must hold within itself the central controlling government of all the races of the serpent-creatures, on this great central world and on the worlds that revolved about the few living suns in the universe about us.
Our captors halted us, at last, before a door heavily guarded by serpent-creatures with ray-tubes, and while one of our own guards passed through the door into the great rooms we could glimpse inside, the remainder kept close watch upon us. I sensed that our own fate was being decided in those rooms beside us, and a few moments later saw that my guess had been right, for there came out the serpent-creature who had gone in, giving to our guards brief hissing orders. At once they marched us onward, emerging again into the great central hall that ran through the vast, blue-shimmering building, and progressing with us down that great, crowded corridor, until they turned us sharply to the right, through a big open door into a mighty hall or room, the nature and purpose of which we could not grasp for the moment.
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