This explanation complete, the Andromedan moved back from the great sphere and motioned me toward it. Slowly I stepped forward, sensing the gaze of the massed, silent thousands on me. I knew that it was the supreme moment of our mission, the moment for which we had battled our way through three universes, the chance to obtain from this great council of the Andromedans the help that might save our universe. I glanced back to the anxious faces of my friends, drew a long breath, and then grasped the two studs before me, concentrating all my thoughts on what I wished to express, as the big sphere above glowed with inward light again, the thrilling current from it rushing into my brain.
In the glowing globe now appeared our universe, a great galaxy of stars floating in space like their own. Swiftly, with shifting thoughts, I showed them its throngs of peopled worlds, the traffic that swept between its suns, the ordered life of its teeming, dissimilar races. Then as my thoughts shifted again they saw the first five thousand serpent-ships rushing in upon that galaxy, destroying all our fleet and settling upon the suns and worlds of the Cancer cluster, saw us fleeing inward and then turning to capture one of the serpent-ships by boarding it in mid-space. Then, briefly, the globe flashed forth the interior of our own great Council Hall, with our Council Chief exhibiting and explaining the records of the serpent-people which we had captured in their ship. In a swift flash I explained the meaning of those records, a flash that showed the serpent-people, masters of the suns and worlds of our own universe, sailing out with increased powers to attack the Andromeda universe, and as that flashing scene showed in the great globe I saw a silent stir of excitement run through the massed thousands about me.
In another moment, though, the globe's scene had shifted back to the Council Hall, with ourselves receiving our orders from the Council Chief, entering our captured serpent-ship and slanting up and outward, bursting past the patrolling serpent-ships, through the void of outer space, only to be captured by the other serpent-ships that had come out to meet us. Our flight then to the serpent-universe, our glimpse of the vast serpent-fleet being built, and the colossal death-beam cone, and the escape of Jhul Din appeared in swift succession. Then came our own strange captivity, our rescue by Jhul Din and escape outward from the serpent-universe through the great space-forts, and our pursuit and final rescue by the thousand Andromedan ships. Then, as our final plea, I showed the vast hordes of serpent-ships and their irresistible mighty death-beam cone sailing out from the dying universe toward our own, rushing upon our galaxy and wiping out all its races. The great globe then went dark, as I released my hold upon its studs and stepped back from it. Our mission was ended, and its success or failure lay in the hands of the massed Andromedans about us.
There was a moment of stillness, a moment in which, I knew, the fate of our universe and of all in it was being decided, a moment in which the silence of the mighty hall seemed thunderous to our strained nerves. Then I saw each of the thousands of Andromedans in the hall reach down toward two smaller metal studs that projected from the floor before each, and as the great globe beside me glowed again with light, I sensed quickly that upon it would be registered the decision of the majority of the great council about me, the method used by them in reaching and registering a decision. Tensely we watched the great glowing globe, and then in it appeared another scene.
It was a scene of countless ships, gleaming flat Andromedan ships, gathering from all the suns and worlds of their universe, upon the giant central world where we were now, tens of thousands of great ships that rose from that world, slanting up and outward. Among them were a hundred ships quite different from the rest, great hemispheres of gleaming metal that rose as smoothly and swiftly as the rest, domed side uppermost; and as though in explanation there flashed in the globe a swift picture of those same hundred domed craft hanging above great suns in the Andromeda universe, projecting down beside and around them great walls and sheaths of the dark-purple glowing force that neutralized gravity, so that those suns, screened from the pull of the suns on their right by a great wall of that glowing purple force, would move away to the left in answer to the pull of the suns there, or vice versa. These, I realized swiftly, were the great sun-swinging ships by means of which the Andromedans had placed their suns in ordered circles, and now in the globe with all the tens of thousands of ordinary flat Andromedan ships they were flashing out into space. Then came a brief scene of the whole vast Andromedan fleet flashing down out of space upon the dying universe, bursting through the opening in the great blue-force wall around it and attacking all the serpent-creatures' suns and worlds.
The next instant the globe had gone dark again, but I knew now what the decision of the council was, and I whirled around to my friends with excitement flaming up in me. "They're going to help us." I cried. "They're going to mass all their great fleet and with it and their sun-swinging ships sail to attack the serpent-universe."
I can not remember now the moments that followed that momentous decision, so overwhelming to us then was the consciousness that we had succeeded in our mission, had dared the awful void and the perils of three universes and had procured the help that might save our galaxy. I remember being led by our Andromedan guides into and through other rooms off the great hall; of the thousands of gaseous figures of the council crowding up the shaft toward the surface above, to speed to every quarter of their universe and summon all their fighting-ships; of Jhul Din noisy with exultation and Korus Kan quiet as ever, but with gleaming eyes. Then all about me seemed dissolving and darkening as the utter fatigue of our strenuous last hours overcame me, a fatigue through which only my knowledge of our mission's importance had so far borne me, and beneath which now I sank into dreamless sleep.
* * *
When I awoke I sensed that hours had passed, though Jhul Din and our followers lay still unconscious about me. Leaving them there, I strode out of the room and into the great Council Hall, whose stupendous circle lay empty now and bare, seeming immeasurably more vast in its white-lit emptiness than when filled with the thousands of gaseous Andromedans. I moved across it to the raised section at the center, stepped upon the purple-glowing disk beneath the ascending shaft, and then, thrust upward by the force of that disk, was moving smoothly toward the round opening in that ceiling and on up the shaft until I had burst out into the unceasing light of the belt of suns above, stepping sidewise onto the ground as I did so. And now I saw that Korus Kan, not a dozen feet away, had turned and was coming toward me.
"Their ships are gathering, Dur Nal," he exclaimed, eyes alight. "You've slept for nearly a day, there below, and their ships have been coming in those hours from every sun and world in their universe."
I swept my gaze about, a certain awe filling me as I saw now the tremendous forces that had gathered and were gathering here on the surface of this giant central world. A tremendous circular area of miles in diameter around us, around the shafts that led down to the hall of the council, had been cleared of all else and was now a single vast gathering-point for the thousands of ships that were massing here. Even while we gazed, the air above was being darkened by the swarms of those ships that shot ceaselessly downward, landing in this great circular area, drawing up in regular rows and masses. In tens of thousands they were grouped about us, a tremendous plain of gleaming metal ships that stretched as far as the eye could reach.
At the center of this vast plain of ships, though, there lay a round clearing, in which we ourselves stood, a clearing in which there rested only a hundred other ships, different far from the thousands around them, a hundred domed, gleaming craft like giant hemispheres of metal. Not a thousand feet from us lay these great, strange craft, their space-doors open and their Andromedan crews busy among the masses of strange mechanisms inside, and I recognized them instantly as the great craft I had seen in the thought-pictures in the Council Hall below, the mighty ships whose projected sheaths and walls of dark-purple force could move giant suns at will.
"The sun-swinging ships," I exclaimed, and Korus K
an nodded, his eyes upon them also.
"Yes," he said, "they'll be the most powerful weapons of the whole great fleet-with them we can crash the suns and worlds of the serpent-universe together at will."
Now, though, we turned our attention from them to the tens of thousands of ships that lay about us. In and out of those ships, too, were moving countless masses of Andromedans, swift-gliding gaseous figures who were inspecting and testing the mechanisms of their craft and the cylinders in their sides that shot forth the crumpling shafts of force. They were making all ready for our start, we knew, for the battle that must ensue when we poured down on the serpent-universe, and we strode over toward them. Already we had learned that the controls and mechanisms of the Andromedan ships were much like those of the serpent-ships, their speed being fully as great, but some features of them were still strange to me. A dozen steps only we took toward them, though, and then stopped short.
For down out of the sunlight above was slanting toward us a close-massed swarm of ships that seemed different from the masses of ships that were landing ceaselessly about us, that moved more slowly, more deliberately. Down it came while we watched it, standing there, seeing it change from a far swarm of black dots in the sunlight above to a mass of long dark shapes, that were becoming clearer to our eyes each moment-shapes that, I saw with a sudden great leap of my heart, were not long and flat, but oval.
"They're serpent-ships!" Korus Kan's great cry stabbed like a sword-blade of sound toward me. "They're the serpent-ships that pursued us to this universe-the three hundred that escaped when we were rescued-they've seen this great fleet gathering and have come to strike a blow at it."
Serpent-ships! My mind was racing with superhuman speed in that instant as they drove down toward us, and I saw that the Antarian was right, that these were the three hundred that had escaped when we were rescued by the Andromedans, and that we thought had fled back to their own universe. Instead they had turned and followed us, knowing that we meant to gather forces to attack their universe, had flashed into the Andromeda universe toward this central world, unseen among the swarms of other ships that were gathering here, and now were swooping down with their score of great disk attraction-ships lowermost, driving down toward us in a fierce, reckless attack. In a single instant it all flashed plain in my mind, and then Korus Kan and I had whirled around, and he was racing back toward the hundred domed sun-swinging ships behind us.
I'll warn these hundred ships." he yelled, as I turned too and raced toward the nearest of the thousands of fighting-ships about us.
Even as I ran toward those thousands of ships, though, their Andromedan crews still unaware of their peril, I saw the massed serpent-ships above slanting straight down toward the hundred domed craft behind me, their attraction-ships hanging motionless above those craft for a moment. I had reached the Andromedan fighting-ships, now, and as the crews of the nearest glided forth to meet me I cried out, pointing upward. They saw the serpent-ships swooping down from above, and then were throwing themselves into their own ships. I raced into one with them, up to the pilot room set near the stem on its long flat upper surface. The Andromedans beside me flung back the controls, then, and our ship and the ships about us were leaping up like light toward the down-rushing serpent-ships.
At the same moment I saw Korus Kan racing into one of the domed sun-swinging ships above which hovered the score of attraction-ships, saw the doors of those domed ships clanging shut as they prepared to escape from the menace above, since they could project their mighty purple force downward only, and would thus be helpless if caught in the attraction-grip of the disk-ships above. A moment more and those hundred domed craft, the most powerful weapon of the great Andromedan fleet, would be safe, I knew. But in that moment, as the three hundred serpent fighting-ships dashed down toward us, I saw the score of hovering attraction-ships glow suddenly with flickering light; the hundred sun-swinging ships beneath were pulled smoothly upward by that tremendous attractive force; and then the attraction-ships, grasping the hundred domed craft that were the heart of our fleet, were racing straight up and outward into space.
13: The Sailing of the Fleet
As that score of glowing disk-ships, with our own hundred sun-swinging craft in their grip, flashed up and out of sight, our fighting-ships were flashing upward with the three hundred fighting-ships of the serpent-creatures racing down to meet us. Then, before we could swerve aside from their mad downward charge to pursue the attraction-ships, they had met us, and in all the world about us there was nothing for the moment but crashing and striking ships. Even as they had flashed down upon us, and we up to meet them, the invisible shafts of force from our cylinders had stabbed up and crossed their downward-reaching death-beams, so that scores of their own ships had crumpled and collapsed in the instant before we met them, scores of ours in turn driving crazily forward and sidewise as the pale beams wiped all life from them in that same moment. As we met them, though, it seemed that our ships and theirs were all to perish alike in crashes in midair, without further need of weapons, so terrific was the impact.
All about us in that moment I glimpsed ships smashing squarely into down-rushing serpent-ships, while our own craft spun and whirled as racing ships grazed along its sides. Then, hanging in the air there a scant mile above the ground, we whirled and grappled with the serpent-craft in a fierce, wild struggle. Their whole aim, we knew, was to keep us occupied long enough to permit the escape of their attraction-ships with our own sun-swinging craft in their grasp, while our object, in turn, was to brush aside these serpent-ships before us and race in pursuit of the attraction-ships. Charge and struggle as we might, though, in the moments following we could not break loose from the fury of the serpent-creatures' attack, who drove toward us with death-beams whirling in all the mad recklessness of despair.
I saw Andromedan ships all about us driving aimlessly away as those pale beams struck them, saw others destroyed by serpent-ships that crashed deliberately into them, and then pouring up from beneath came the masses of the great fleet beneath, thousands of ships that raced up and around the struggling serpent-ships, crumpling and destroying them with countless invisible shafts of force from their cylinders. Within another moment the last of the enemy craft had vanished, but by that time our own ship and a half-thousand others were flashing up in pursuit of the attraction-ships.
Up, up we raced-up until the giant world was but a tiny ball beneath, hanging at the center of the great ring of suns-but then we stopped, and hung motionless. For we were, we saw, too late. About us there stretched only the far-reaching circles of flaming suns that made up the Andromeda universe, with no sign of the attraction-ships or their prey. In those moments that the struggling serpent-craft had held us back, the attraction-ships had flashed out from this universe into the boundless gulf of space, with the hundred sun-swinging craft in their grasp, with Korus Kan himself in one of those ships. On none of our space-charts were they visible, safe from our pursuit out in the void, and we knew that somewhere in that void our sun-swinging craft and all in them were meeting their end, held in the relentless grasp of the attraction-ships and destroyed by them, since the sun-swinging craft could project their own terrific forces only downward. We were too late. Silently, slowly, we slanted back down toward the great central world.
As we came to rest there, among the tens of thousands of other gathered ships, I saw Jhul Din and our followers, aroused from beneath by the battle, running forward to meet me. I saw him glance about as he came toward me, inquiry in his glance, and then I shook my head.
"We've lost the most powerful weapon of the whole Andromedan fleet," I told him, slowly. "And we've lost, too, Korus Kan."
I think that in the hours that followed, while the last thousands of ships swept in from all quarters of the Andromeda universe to gather around us, it was the loss of our friend that lay heavier on the minds of both myself and the Spican than that of the hundred sun-swinging ships. Those hundred ships, we knew, would have enabl
ed us to wreck all the serpent-universe, whereas now we must meet them ship to ship, and trust to courage and fighting-power alone to win for us. Yet even their loss seemed small to us beside that of the friend with whom we two had roved all the ways of our galaxy in the cruisers of the Interstellar Patrol, with whom we had dared across the void and through the serpent-universe and its perils, toward this Andromeda universe. Silent, though, we remained, watching the thousands of long, flat ships massing about us, and it was still in silence that I received from the Andromedan leaders the knowledge that I had been chosen to command their vast fleet in its great attack, since I was familiar with the serpent-universe which we were to attack.
* * *
A half-dozen hours after the raid of the serpent-ships, the last of the Andromedan craft had sped in from the farthest suns of their universe, and a full hundred thousand mighty ships covered the surface of the great world as far as the eye could reach, gleaming there beneath the light of the belted suns above. Long, grim and ready they waited, their gaseous Andromedan crews alert at the controls, while before us lay in the central clearing our own long, flat flagship. In it, too, the Andromedan crew stood ready, the scant score of my own strange followers among them, its space-door open and waiting for our start. Standing beside it, though, Jhul Din and I paused; then I turned back to where the score or more of Andromedans that were their leaders, the chiefs of their great council, stood.
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