As I sprang back out into the corridor, though, the racing masses of the serpent-creatures were but a scant hundred feet behind me, my own companions racing out of the building ahead of me, now. The serpent-things loosed no rays upon us, desiring, I knew, to return us to that hell of living death from which we had escaped, but as I sprang down the corridor they were so close behind that another moment, I knew, would see my capture and that of my friends ahead. Then, just as the serpent-creatures, racing behind me, reached the door of the museum, they halted, recoiled. For out into the corridor from that museum-hall had flopped a great, terrible shape, the mighty disk of pale flesh with a single central eye that my needle had been first to revive.
Instantly it had moved upon the serpent-creatures upon whom its glaring eye fell, and before they could escape had thrown its vast disk of flesh about a mass of scores of them, bunching its body swiftly together then with terrific power and crushing them within it. At another mass of them it leapt, ravening with terrific fury after its prisonment of untold ages of living death, while out of the museum there came after it the other shapes I had revived, awful insect-beings that leapt upon the serpent-creatures with terrible claws and fangs, heedless of the death-beams that flashed toward them, many-limbed things of flesh that whirled forward as fiercely to the attack, grotesque, terrible monsters of a dozen different sorts that leapt now upon the serpent-creatures who had prisoned them for ages with inconceivable raging power, heaping about them great masses of crushed and mangled serpent-dead.
Only in a glance over my shoulder did I glimpse that massacre of the serpent-creatures behind me, for I was racing on down the corridor and out of the building into the narrow street, where my friends awaited me. With a word I explained to them what had happened, and instantly we set off down the street, between the great, towering buildings of beaming blue force that lay silent and dead now in the dusky darkness, only their own flickering light and that of the vast, dim-red sun that swung in the black heavens above lighting us forward as we raced on. Behind, though, in the great building from which we had fled, were rising appalling cries, the hissing utterances of the serpent-creatures and the strange and awful cries of the things with which they battled.
Now about us were rising other cries as the serpent-creatures across all the city began to rouse beneath the terrific din of the wild fight in the central building. Behind us, as we raced on down the narrow street, we saw them emerging from the buildings, gazing about, and then as we were glimpsed, fleeing toward the landing-circle where lay the ships, other cries went up and after us leapt the serpent-things from all along the street, pouring into the street from its buildings and from adjacent streets and racing after us.
But a few hundred yards ahead lay the landing-circle, and as we ran on we could make out the gleaming, great shapes of the oval ships lying upon it, could discern the shape of our own awaiting ship, at the circle's edge, its door open before us. Toward that black opening, as toward some tremendous magnet, we stumbled on with the last of our strength, but close behind came the serpent-creatures in ever-increasing masses, the alarm spreading now over all the gigantic city about us, and there lay still a distance that seemed infinite between us and that open door. Then, when we were but a scant hundred feet from it, the serpent-creatures hardly more than that behind us, Korus Kan slipped, stumbled and went down.
We wheeled around, reaching down to help him up, but halted even as we did so. For the serpent-creatures behind us were within yards of us now, hissing cries of triumph rising from them as they writhed toward us. Then, in the next moment, from the great, looming bulk of our ship ahead there stabbed down and over us a shaft of blinding crimson light, a narrow, deadly ray that struck the writhing masses of our pursuers and swept through them in a great, slicing curve, sending them into annihilation in dazzling bursts of light as it touched them. Those farther behind came racing on, nevertheless, but before they could reach us we had stumbled on and into the ship, and with space-doors clanging and generators suddenly droning loud, our ship shot up into the darkness just in time to escape a dozen pale death-beams that sprang toward us from the mass of our pursuers.
Up into the darkness above the vast, blue-glowing city we flashed, Jhul Din and Korus Kan and I bursting up into the pilot room and replacing our follower there whose timely action had saved us. Beneath us the whole city was rising as the alarm spread, lights flashing out here and there among its buildings, serpent-hordes pouring into the streets, while from the landing-circle from which we had just risen there shot up after us a dozen long gleaming oval ships, in close pursuit. So swiftly were they after us that before we had fully realized their nearness, their death-beams were sweeping and slicing through the darkness about us. I shouted a swift order, Korus Kan whirled the controls about and sent our ship flashing straight back into the mass of our dozen pursuers, and then we had leapt through them, our red rays striking lightly and left, as we did so, and two of their great craft had flared there in the darkness above the great city in blinding crimson light, and we were racing up into the darkness again with the ten remaining ships farther behind, but still speeding on our track.
Upward we shot with terrific speed, and in a moment the vast, turning world beneath, covered with the masses of blue force-structures, had contracted and dwindled to a mere point beneath us as we fled up and outward into space. As we flashed up from it, though, I had glimpsed rising from it a full five hundred serpent-ships, with a score of the great disk attraction-ships, and as these lifted to follow the ten that leapt close behind us, I saw that the serpent-creatures were taking no slightest chance of our escape. I turned to Korus Kan, swiftly, as our craft leapt upward, shouting to him above the droning roar of the generators that filled our craft now:
"Head straight out toward the great vibration-wall-toward the opening in it," I cried.
"We'll never get through that opening-between the space-forts." Jhul Din exclaimed. "They'll have received word of our escape, and will be waiting for us."
I shook my head. "We'll have to run between them and take our chance," I yelled. "It's our one chance of escape from this universe."
* * *
Now the giant central world beneath was no longer visible, as we raced upward and outward from it at terrific speed, and ahead loomed one of the three giant suns that lay about that world. We were leaping forward straight toward it, and in an instant it had broadened across the heavens to a stupendous disk of raging crimson fire, a thunderous, titanic sun into which we seemed inevitably doomed to plunge, but as it flared across the firmament before us Korus Kan swerved the controls, and we were flashing by it, past the red star's edge and on outward through the dying universe. Traveling at a speed that was all but suicidal to use inside any universe, thrumming on at all but our utmost velocity, we reeled outward through the throngs of dead and dying stars about us, while behind us at a speed that matched our own our ten pursuers came relentlessly on, with the five hundred-odd ships that we had seen rising from the serpent-city following us in turn.
Out-out-the minutes of that mad outward flight through the dying universe are but a confused, strange memory of a wild, awful race through the massed dead and dying stars that thronged thick about us, and between which we drove with such terrific swiftness that hardly could we glimpse them in passing save on our space-chart. On that chart I saw a close-massed cluster of dark suns full before us, saw the Antarian swing the ship lightning-like sidewise to avoid it, then sharply drive the controls back again as before us a crimson-flaming star about which turned countless worlds of the serpent-people loomed before us. Out-out-flashing crazily on past crimson sun and thundering dark-star, through the massed suns of great dead and dying clusters and past far-swinging planets, with the ten long ships behind clinging remorselessly to us-out-out-until far ahead there became visible across all the heavens before us the wavering pale blue light of the great vibration-wall that encircled this universe.
Out between the last of the dying unive
rse's dark and dying suns we were racing, toward that mighty wall, and as we leapt forward I pointed toward it. "The space-forts!" I exclaimed. "Make for the opening between them, Korus Kan-and slacken speed a little."
Straight toward the two great metal structures set in the pale blue-shining wall we leapt, two huge fortresses of gleaming metal from whose narrow openings came brilliant white light, whose mighty death-beam tubes swung threateningly out toward the space between them, the single vibrationless opening in the vast and impenetrable vibration-wall. They had been warned, were ready for us, we knew, and knew too that not even by a miracle could our ship run between those towering forts without coming under the deadly beams, yet still toward them we leapt, at a speed slackened a little, now, while after us like leaping things of prey came the ten ships, rapidly overhauling us, flashing closer each moment.
We had almost reached the great opening in the wall, now, the ten ships behind almost upon us, and as we flashed through space the whole scene was like one from some weird dream-the thronging dark and dying suns of the great universe behind us, the tremendous, all but invisible, pale blue wall of light that enclosed it, the single opening in that wall full before us, guarded on either side by the mighty metal space-forts, the great ships leaping after us just behind. We were flashing into the narrow opening-from the great space-forts to right and left the deadly death-beams were stabbing out toward us in scores, in hundreds-the ships behind were almost upon us, their own death-beams stabbing toward us-and then I cried a single word to Korus Kan. He thrust the controls suddenly forward with a lightning-like move, and just as our ship was flashing into the narrow opening it dipped sharply downward instead and plummeted down through space while the ships just behind, before they could dip with us, had rushed into the opening and into the hell of death-beams that crossed and recrossed in it from the space-forts on each side.
The next instant, while we curved swiftly upward again, we saw the ten ships that had rushed into that opening whirling blindly about as the death-beams from their own space-forts seared through them and wiped out all life inside them. Those in the great space-forts, realizing those ten to be their own ships, had turned off the beams in the next moment but were an instant too late, since in the narrow opening the ten ships were whirling crazily to that side and this, without guiding intelligence inside them, smashing into each other and into the space-forts on each side as they rushed insanely in all directions. And even as that wild confusion inside the opening was at its height our own ship had curved up and was flashing at full speed into the opening, between the space-forts.
For an instant, in that wild chaos of whirling ships, those in the space-forts did not glimpse our own flying ship and in that instant we were half through the great opening between them. Then they had seen us, had loosed their beams upon us in scores, and in the next instant all about us seemed a single tremendous melee of aimlessly whirling ships, and gigantic space-forts, and pale death-beams that sliced and swept about us. Thick about us flashed those ghostly fingers of death, and full before us two of the whirling ships collided and smashed with terrific force, then Korus Kan had dodged them by a swift shifting of the controls, our generators roared suddenly louder as he turned on our utmost speed, and the crazy chaos of ships and beams and forts about us had suddenly vanished, replaced by darkness and silence unutterable.
We were through, were racing out into the void again with the great vibration-wall and the dying universe it enclosed and the pursuing serpent-ships inside it dropping farther behind each moment. In the blackness that encircled us the dying universe was a far-flung, dwindling glow behind us, and our own a far patch of misty light to the left, but there shone in the darkness far ahead a misty disk of radiant light, and it was toward this that our ship was heading. For we were flashing out again upon our interrupted mission, were flying out through the awful gulf of outer space once more toward the Andromeda universe.
10: Flight and Pursuit
"Through the vibration-wall." I cried, as our ship raced out at utmost speed. "Out of the serpent-universe-and we may yet get to the Andromeda universe in time."
The eyes of Jhul Din and Korus Kan were as aflame with excitement as my own, at that moment, and from beneath came the triumphant shouts of our followers. There remained of the latter hardly more than a bare score, I knew-few enough to handle the great ship, but the control and operation of it were so simple that by standing alternate watches we could hold our course through space. Briefly I explained this to Korus Kan, he nodding assent, when from Jhul Din there came a cry that caused both of us to spin around toward him in swift alarm. The big Spican's eyes were fixed upon the space-chart above, and as we turned he raised an arm toward it.
"The five hundred serpent-ships." he cried. "They've come out through the great wall too-they're after us."
The blood in my veins seemed to chill with sudden renewal of our former tenseness and terror, as on the space-chart we saw, racing out after us from the dying universe, the five hundred-odd serpent-ships that had risen from the giant central world to pursue us, and that now, undeterred by the fate of the ten ships we had lured to destruction, were speeding out into the great void after us. Moments they had been delayed, apparently, by the confusion and chaos there in the opening between the space-forts, but though in those moments we had flashed far ahead their close-massed ships came on after us at their topmost speed-a great pursuit that they were carrying out into the void between the universes.
"They'll pursue us to the bitter end." I exclaimed, my eyes on the chart. "They'll go to any length rather than let us get to the Andromeda universe."
I wheeled about, my eyes seeking our speed-dials. Already we were traveling through the void at our own highest velocity, a full ten million light-speeds, but the shining mass of the Andromeda universe seemed infinitely distant in the blackness ahead, with that swift, relentless pursuit behind us. A moment more and Jhul Din strode out of the pilot room down to the great, throbbing generators beneath, striving to gain from them a fraction more of speed. For now was beginning, we knew, the most bitter of all chases, a stern chase with vast abysses of space lying between us and the universe that was our goal, and with the five hundred flying craft of the serpent-creatures close behind.
On-on-moment after moment, hour after dragging hour, our ship hummed through the awful void, flashing with each moment through countless millions of miles of the infinity of blackness and emptiness that lay about us, with the half-thousand ships of the serpent-creatures coming grimly on behind. The far-flung, dim-glowing dying universe behind us glowed even dimmer, diminishing in extent, too, as we shot onward, while before us the shining disk-mass of the Andromeda universe shone ever more brightly; yet it was with a terrifying slowness that that disk largened as we flashed toward it. Tensely I stood with Korus Kan in the pilot room, gazing toward it, and even then could not but reflect upon what a strange spectacle it would all have presented to any observer who could have seen it: a spectacle of one mighty ship pursued by a half-thousand, as it raced through the void from one universe to another, manned by a score of dissimilar beings drawn from the stars of still a third universe, and carrying with them its fate.
But it was with dark enough thoughts, as our ship flashed on for hour upon hour, that I myself contemplated the three universes that lay before and behind and beside us. Before us the Andromeda universe was shining in ever-increasing size and brilliance with each hour that we raced toward it; but what, I wondered, would we find in that universe even were we able to escape the swift and terrible pursuit behind? Was there any chance of finding in it, in the race that held sway over its suns and worlds, the help that could save our galaxy? Was it not possible that even were we able to reach it we would be treated by that race as merely other strangers and invaders from an alien universe?
My eyes swung, too, toward the far little glow of light in the blackness to our left, a patch of misty light that seemed very tiny in the stupendous blackness and emptiness of
space that lay about it. Yet my mind's eye, leaping out across the terrific abysses that separated us from it, could see that little light-patch as it was, could make out the throngs of blazing stars that formed it-our galaxy, the giant suns and smaller stars and thronging, far-swinging worlds through which we had roamed with the ships of the Interstellar Patrol. And I could see it as it would be now, convulsed with panic fear, as from their great base of the Cancer cluster the vanguard of the serpent-invaders spread terror and destruction out over the neighboring suns, preparing the way for the mighty host of invaders that was to follow.
But it was when I turned, glancing back to where the dying universe of the serpent-people glowed dim and ominous behind us, decreasing steadily in size as we flashed from it, that my mood was darkest. In that mighty mass of dead and dying suns, I knew, there on the giant world that turned between that central triplet of great, dying suns, the serpent-races were completing their plans, were preparing to launch themselves across the void toward my own universe. Already their vast fleet of tens of thousands of ships was all but complete, and soon would be completed, too, that gigantic death-beam projector whose awful power no force could ever withstand. Our only chance of preventing the descent of that vast horde and their terrible weapon upon our galaxy was to reach the Andromeda universe and procure there, somehow, the aid with which we might return and crush the serpent-people in their own dying universe. And had we a chance even to reach the Andromeda universe, with the half-thousand craft of our serpent-pursuers driving relentlessly on our track?
* * *
In the hours that followed, it was as though all else had ceased to exist, so centered were our minds upon that remorseless pursuit. On and on we flashed, our throbbing, beating generators flinging us through the void with their utmost power, but behind came the serpent-ships at their topmost speed, too, and though for forty-eight hours we had raced through space we had covered hardly a third of the distance to the Andromeda universe. As I raised my eyes to the space-chart then, toward our single ship-dot and the swarm of dots behind it, a sharp, cold thrill ran through me. For now I saw that the gap of a few inches that separated us from them on the chart had lessened a little, the swarm drawing noticeably closer toward our single ship-dot. A moment I stared up at the chart in stunned silence; then, with realization, a cry broke from me.
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