Part 6
There was a silence of moments before Jhul Din, first of us, found his voice. "Heat-regions and radio-active force regions!" he exclaimed. "If more of them lie between us and the Andromeda universe, what's our chance of getting there?"
Korus Kan shook his head. "We'll get there," he said, "but we'll have to keep close watch every moment of our flight--there's no way of telling how thickly scattered these great vibration-regions may lie in space about us."
A moment more and Jhul Din left us, passing down into the ship's body to ascertain what damage had been wrought by the great zone of radio-active force, though we knew that we had escaped from it before it could seriously damage the ship. And as I now relinquished the controls to Korus Kan, pausing with him a moment to look out again with some fearfulness into the black void through which we were racing, it was with a full realization, at last, of the tremendous perils and unguessed circumstances that might lie in the vast spaces through which we must yet flash. Yet as my eyes fell again on the misty-glowing circle of the Andromeda universe, and the sinister, dimly flickering mass of the dying universe of the serpent-people, to its right, I felt my determination steeling again within me.
It was the sight of those two far patches of light ahead, I think, that held us all to our purpose in the hours, the days, that followed. Long, strange days they were, when with no sun whatever near us we could measure time only by the great abysses of space through which our ship was steadily flashing, computing from those distances and from our unvarying velocity the passing of the hours. But with each day, with each hour, we were racing countless billions of miles nearer toward the Andromeda universe, and toward the goal of our tremendous journey. On and on we plunged, our prow turned ever toward that misty circle of light ahead, that was largening and brightening with each hour that we sped toward it.
Thrice, in those following days, we glimpsed great regions of heat and crimson light like that through which we first had plunged, and each time we were able to swerve away from them and detour around them in time, and so escaped a renewal of our first dread experience of them. More than once, too, our instruments gave us warning of zones of radio-active or electrical force near us, and these we gave even a wider berth than the heat-regions, for these we feared most of all, I think. Ether-currents and vast ether-maelstroms were about us, too, we knew, but the tremendous speed of our craft brought us flashing through those where a slower-moving ship would have perished.
As it was, one danger that had menaced us always in navigation inside the galaxy, the presence of meteors and meteor-swarms, was lacking in our flight. Yet I think that almost we would have welcomed their presence about us, for all their danger, if only for the knowledge that some other matter besides our ship moved and existed in the mighty void around us. It was our ship's isolation, the knowledge that all about it for countless billions upon billions of miles, thousands upon tens of thousands of light-years, there stretched only the awful regions of empty space, an ocean of lightless space in which the galaxies of flaring suns here and there were but tiny islands, that oppressed us most. Far behind lay our own galaxy, and far ahead the Andromeda universe; and between universe and universe, an infinitesimally tiny speck there in the mighty void, our ship raced on and on.
But as we added day after measured day to our flight, as we flashed nearer and nearer toward the Andromeda universe, it slowly began to change before us, to wax from a little patch of glowing light to a larger and brighter patch, and then to a great oval of light that flamed brilliant in the blackness of space before us, and finally to a vast disk-shaped mass of stars like our own universe. The disk mass lay in space with edge toward us, and seen thus, the light of its countless thronging stars was fused almost into a single waxing glow, but as we swept nearer and nearer that glow began to resolve itself into the light of the myriad massed suns of which it was composed. So brightly flamed those gathering suns in the heavens before us that only with an effort could we make out, far toward the right, the still faint glow of the dying universe of the serpent-people, as near to us almost as that of Andromeda, yet infinitely dim and dead in comparison with it.
* * * * *
Steadily we flashed on, day following day, until when a score of them had passed we computed ourselves as having traversed two-thirds of our journey, and could see that ever more swiftly the great universe of stars ahead was widening across the heavens. On that twentieth day I spent hours with Jhul Din in our regular inspection of the ship's mechanism, passing with him through the long room where our engineers, depleted in number by the death-beam that had sliced through our ship, tended carefully the mighty generators. Then the Spican and I passed out of the room, and were proceeding down the long corridor that led toward the pilot room when there came suddenly from it, ahead of us, a sharp cry.
We stopped short a moment, then raced down the corridor and burst up into the pilot room, where Korus Kan turned swiftly from the controls toward us.
"Ships are approaching from ahead!" he cried, pointing up toward the big space-chart.
We looked, and saw that even as he had said there moved upon that chart a half-hundred black dots, in close formation, creeping steadily downward across the blank chart to meet the upward-creeping dot that was our ship. In silent amazement we watched, as our craft raced on, and then saw that as we neared them the fifty ships ahead were slowly halting, and then beginning to move back toward the Andromeda universe in the same direction as ourselves. They were allowing us to slowly overtake them, obviously intending to race beside us at the same speed as ourselves, toward the Andromeda universe. And as they made that move Jhul Din uttered an exclamation.
"They must be ships from the Andromeda universe itself!" he cried. "They've learned of our approach by space-charts of some kind--have come out to meet us!"
My heart leapt at the thought, for if it were so it would mean the first success of our mission across the void. Silently we watched, as our ship's single dot on the chart raced closer and closer toward the half-hundred dots above it, they moving now at a speed almost equal to our own. Within moments we would be able to glimpse them, we knew, and gazed tensely into the blackness of space ahead, toward the Andromeda universe's flaring suns, as our craft raced on. Moments were passing, tense moments of silence and watchfulness, and then far ahead we glimpsed in the void, hardly to be seen against the great glow of the Andromeda universe, a little mass of light-points that steadily were largening as we gradually overtook them.
A full fifty of them in sight, they were flashing on in a close formation, allowing us to overhaul them, changing from mere light-points into dark, vaguely glimpsed shapes as we drove nearer toward them. Then at last we had reached them, were driving in among them as they moved now at the same speed as ourselves, could see their shapes more clearly as long and _oval_, their front ends white-lit transparent-walled rooms like our own. Nearer we were flashing to those before us and about us, and then in those white-lit control rooms I glimpsed their occupants, slender, writhing pale shapes at sight of which I cried aloud.
"Serpent-ships!" I cried. "Serpent-ships from the dying universe ahead! Those back in our galaxy from whom we escaped have warned them of our coming, by the means of etheric communication their records mentioned--they know our mission and they've come out to intercept us here in space!"
Even as I cried out, Korus Kan's hands flashed out to the controls, but he was an instant too late. For at that same moment the ships just before us had turned and circled in one swift movement, and were rushing straight back toward us. I had a flashing glimpse of their white-lit prows racing toward us through the intense darkness, and saw with photographic clearness the slender serpent-shapes in those brilliantly lit pilot rooms, and then the foremost ship loomed suddenly enormous as it flashed straight toward us. With a sharp cry Korus Kan drove the controls sidewise to swerve our ship, but before we could avoid the onrushing craft ahead it was upon us and with a terrific, thunderous shock had crashed straight into our own racing ship!
7. _The Gates of a Universe_
I think now that it was only that last jerking aside of the controls by Korus Kan that saved us from utter annihilation in that moment. For as he moved them our ship swerved sidewise, not enough to avoid the collision but enough to cause the onrushing ship to strike our own obliquely along the side instead of head on, and it was that alone that saved us. The crash shook our great craft like a leaf in a gale, trembling and reeling there in the black gulf of space and flinging us all to the pilot room's floor, and for a moment it seemed to us that our ship had been riven apart. Then, as it steadied, we scrambled to our feet, just in time to see the ship that had crashed into us reeling away to the side, a shattered mass of metal, while down upon us from above and all about the other serpent-ships were swooping.
As Korus Kan sprang back to the controls I leapt to the order-tube, was on the point of shouting a command to our crew beneath, when down from the hovering ships above us there dropped around us a dozen or more of great flexible ropes or loops of gleaming metal, that encircled our ship like great snares. Within another instant our craft had been drawn upward by them until it lay securely lashed between two of the enemy ships, our ray-tubes useless now; since to loose them was but to perish with the ships that held us. Then another ship was slanting down above us, and as it hung over us there projected downward from its lower space-door toward our own upper space-door a hollow tube of metal of the same diameter as the two space-doors, that attached itself with a click to our own upper door, forming a hermetically sealed gangway there between our two ships in space.
Until that moment we had stood motionless in amazement, somewhat stunned by the suddenness of our ship's capture; then as the space-door of our ship clanged open above I uttered a cry, sprang out into the corridor that ran the ship's length, and saw the members of our crew bursting into that corridor in answer to my cry, even as from the space-door chamber beside it there writhed out a horde of scores of the serpent-creatures! Jhul Din and Korus Kan were beside me, now, and with shouts of fierce anger we rushed upon the masses of serpent-creatures who still were pouring down from the ship above through the hollow gangway.
The mêlée that followed was wilder than when we ourselves had captured this same ship; since though we and all our crew flung ourselves forward upon the things without hesitation, we were weaponless and outnumbered by ten to one. As it was, I struck out with all my power at the hideous, writhing beings, feeling some of them collapse beneath my wild blows even as they strove to coil about me; saw Korus Kan, with his triple powerful metal arms, crushing the life from those who leapt upon him, cool and silent as ever even in that wild din of battle; glimpsed the great Spican grasping those about him in his tremendous arms and literally tearing them into fragments as we battled on. But rapidly the members of our crew who battled about us were going down, the life crushed from them by the coiling bodies that overwhelmed us, and then as I strode on I too was gripped from beneath, by a serpent-creature that had wound itself about my feet, and now pulled me down.
Struggling in the grip of a half-dozen of the alien creatures, I heard Jhul Din shouting hoarsely, saw him finally pulled from his feet also by a great mass of the writhing things, and then Korus Kan and the remainder of our crew were overcome too, and within another moment all was over. Scores of the serpent-creatures lay dead about us, but with them lay many of our own crew; not more than a bare score were left to us now of all our party. Gripped tightly still by the serpent-creatures, we were thrust down a narrow stair and into an empty little storeroom beneath the pilot room, in its metal walls but a single space-window giving a view forward. The door snapped shut as the last of us were thrust inside, and then our captors had left us, the lashings that had snared our ship were cast loose by the ships on either side, and as the humming of the generators waxed loud again our ship and those about it began to move once more through space.
"They're heading now toward the dying universe!" exclaimed Korus Kan, gazing through the single window into the black gulf outside. "They're going to take us there as prisoners!"
But I too, gazing through the window at his side, had seen that our ship's prow was turning now toward the right, so that ahead now instead of the great glowing mass of the Andromeda universe there lay the dim, faintly glowing patch of light that was the serpent-peoples' waning universe. Toward it now our ship and the ships about us were flashing at greater and greater speed, and as they hummed on the despair that had already gripped me deepened. It was not the peril in which we ourselves lay that affected me, for well I knew that from the moment of our capture our fate had been sealed, and that our temporary reprieve from death meant only that some more horrible fate awaited us in the dying universe. It was that the last chance of our own universe had vanished with our capture, the last hope to summon from the Andromeda universe the help that could save our galaxy gone now forever.
In a silence of utter despair I gazed ahead as our ship and those about it hummed on, while Jhul Din and Korus Kan and all the survivors of our crew prisoned with us maintained the same despairing silence. There was no plan for escape, no suggestion of it, even, for well we knew the impossibility of even winning clear of the room that was our prison, not to speak of overcoming the hordes of serpent-creatures who now operated our ship. In a strange apathy of spirit we sat and stood, hour after hour, speaking little. Our eyes and minds turned only to the window through which we could see, in the black abyss of space ahead, the faintly glowing universe of the serpent-people broadening slowly ahead as our ships raced on at full speed toward it.
* * * * *
A day passed, and that dying universe had grown across a full third of the vault of space before us, a great, dim-glowing region of flickering luminescence utterly different from the radiance of the shining Andromeda universe, that lay now far to our left. On and on the serpent-ships raced, unceasingly, hour upon hour, until at last on the third day of our imprisonment their speed began to slacken, the drone of the great generators falling a little in pitch as they drew near at last to their galaxy, that had expanded outward now until it seemed to fill all the heavens before us, so strange a spectacle to our eyes that almost we forgot our own predicament and despair in contemplation of it.
Full in the heavens before us it lay, a mighty galaxy fully as large as our own, as the Andromeda universe, but infinitely different, a galaxy not of life but of death. In all its mighty mass were no flaming white or blue or yellow suns like those of our own galaxy, no brilliant young stars surrounded by circling, sun-warmed worlds. Here was only a vast forest of dead and dying suns, stretched across the heavens, huge throngs of dark, burned-out stars, cold and black and barren, that crowded thick upon one another, with here and there a few dying suns of dark, smoky red, somber crimson stars in the last stages of stellar evolution. It was with the light of these few alone that the great mass faintly glowed, an expiring universe in which all light and life were sinking into darkness and death.
Silent with awe and wonder we watched as our ships drove in toward this darkening galaxy, and then I began to make out, between us and it, a strange, constant flicker of blue light that seemed to extend all about the faint-glowing universe before us. Stronger that flicker was growing as we sped on toward it, though through it there shone clearly as ever the light of the crimson suns beyond it. At last we seemed racing straight into it, and now I saw that it was a colossal globular shell of flickering blue light, almost invisible, that enclosed within itself all the mighty, circular mass of the dying universe before us. Our ships seemed about to flash straight into it, but now turned sharply to the left, speeding along the great light-barrier's edge. A ship beside us, though, had turned a little too late and had struck the light-wall while turning, and as it did so I saw it rebounding back with terrific force as though in collision with a solid wall, its whole prow crumpled by the impact. Then, at last, I comprehended the nature of this vast shell of flickering blue light that enclosed the dying universe.
"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 was no flickering barrier, and 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 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!"