Part 8
It was these things alone, though, the coming of night and the changing of our guards, the cessation and recommencement of the activity in the corridor outside, the waning and waxing of the crimson light that fell through the great building's flickering blue vibration-walls, that alone marked for us the passage of time. Day was following day while we sat on there in living death, unmoving as stones, and I knew that with each day the great fleet of the serpent-creatures I had glimpsed in the clearing would be approaching nearer to completion, as would the colossal death-beam cone with which they meant to wipe out all the races of all the galaxy's worlds. And we, on whom had rested the one chance of our universe, had failed--we were prisoners. I could not believe that Jhul Din, with his two or three followers, had managed to get through the great vibration-wall about this universe and speed to the Andromeda universe for help. Our last hope was gone, and the last hope of our galaxy with it, prisoned as we were in the helpless flesh of our own bodies, from which there could be no escape, lacking even the power to destroy ourselves and end our endless torture.
* * * * *
The passing days became blurred and confused in my mind, as we sat on there, and I felt that my brain was beginning to give at last beneath the awful strain. Time still I could roughly measure, though, by the waning of activity in the corridor outside, by the darkening of the crimson light that slanted through the pale blue walls. I think that it was on the tenth day of our imprisonment that I watched that light darkening, as always, wondering for how many times I was to see it thus, for how many days, years, ages, we were to lie in this living death, in the serpent-creatures' museum. As I watched, the passing throngs in the corridor outside were thinning, disappearing, with the coming of the dusky night, and soon there was almost complete silence about us, only the low hissing of the two serpent-guards, near the room's door, as they conversed there, breaking the stillness. Then suddenly my brooding thoughts were broken into by sharp surprize as I glimpsed a big, stealthy shape that showed itself for a moment in the corridor outside, and then dodged swiftly back.
With a sudden flame of excitement leaping in me for the first time since our imprisonment, I gazed toward the door, eyes unmoving as always. A moment more and the dark, erect shape that I had glimpsed outside came slowly into view once more, peering around the door's edge at the two serpent-guards, who for the moment were turned away from it. Seeing this, the lurking shape came slowly into the room, through the door from the shadows of the corridor, and as it did so I saw it clearly, and well it was for me that I could not speak or surely I would have shouted aloud. For it was Jhul Din!
A great wave of hope flooded through my brain as I saw the big Spican move stealthily inside, a thick metal bar in his grasp, his eyes roving about the dusky-lit great room. Then, as they fell upon our own case, upon us sitting motionless, I saw him gasp. A moment he surveyed us, my eyes staring stonily straight into his own as we sat still rigid and unmoving, and then he had turned, was moving silently toward the two unsuspecting guards. Closer he crept toward them, while I watched in an agony of suspense, and then as he reached them, raised his great bar above his head, the two creatures, warned by some slight sound, whirled suddenly around and confronted him!
Instantly the death-tubes they held came up, but in the moment that they did so Jhul Din's bar had smashed down upon them in a great, crushing blow that laid both lifeless on the blue force-floor. Then the Spican sprang to our case, opening its side and lifting us out, seeking with rough restorative measures to revive us. Yet we lay as silent and rigid as ever, and I saw despair creep into his eyes, I could have shouted to him in my agony of mind had not my muscles been as far-severed from my brain's control as ever. Then the Spican raised from his fruitless efforts, gazed despairingly about, until his eyes fell upon the niche in the wall that held the tubes of red and green fluid. With a leap he was upon them, bringing them and the needle back toward us.
A moment he studied them, in doubt, then inserted the needle in the green fluid and pierced my forearm with it. I could have screamed to him his mistake had I had power of speech, for the green fluid injected into me had no effect upon me whatever, since I lay already beneath its force. Seeing this he swiftly made trial of the red fluid, injecting this in the same manner into my body, and then, as he gazed anxiously down upon my rigid figure, I felt a sudden warmth flooding through me, and for the first time in all those days became _aware_ of my body, felt muscles and limbs moving in answer to my will's commands, felt heart and breathing starting after their long cessation. Then I was staggering up to my feet, the Spican's great arm about me, reeling upward with muscles utterly strange and cramped after those days of living death.
"Jhul Din!" I cried, my voice strange to my own ears after that time of speechlessness, and he gripped my arm reassuringly.
"Steady, Dur Nal," he said. "You're out of that now, and we'll win clear of this hellish city yet."
As he spoke he was dropping to the floor, injecting swiftly into the bodies of the rest the red fluid, beginning with Korus Kan, and as he did so he explained to me swiftly how he and his three followers had managed to elude the ships that had pursued him by fleeing from them into a near-by cluster of dead and dying suns, and pretending to have perished by crashing into a great dark-star, landing his ship upon its barren, burned-out surface and escaping the scrutiny of the pursuing ships, who returned in the belief that he and his ship had met annihilation. In that hiding-place, upon that black and airless and lightless star, he had remained for days, not daring to venture forth amid the swarms of serpent-ships that filled the space-lanes about him, yet resolved to return and ascertain our fate. When at last, days later, he had been able to venture out, back to this vast world and down upon it through the dusky night, he had boldly landed the ship where it would excite no suspicion, in the landing-circle from which he had first escaped in it. Then, leaving his little crew of three in it and stealing through the shadows of the silent streets toward the great central building where he hoped against hope to find some trace of us, he had made his way through the darkened corridors of the huge structure until he had stumbled upon the strange museum of the serpent-people where we were prisoned.
While he swiftly explained this to me Korus Kan and our followers were staggering up beside me as the injections of red fluid revived them, one by one, and I turned toward the door, then uttered a horror-stricken exclamation. For in the corridor outside a single serpent-creature faced us, attracted perhaps by the sound of our voices, its glassy eyes full upon us! Even in the instant that I saw it, before ever I could leap upon it, it had turned with incredible quickness and was flashing back down the corridor, farther into the great building, uttering as it did so a high, hissing cry. And in an instant that cry was taken up and re-echoed in all the great structure about us, by the roused serpent-creatures who were rushing in answer to it!
"The alarm!" I cried. "Out of the building and to the ship!"
With lightning swiftness now Jhul Din was injecting in the last of our followers the restorative red fluid, and then as those last ones stumbled up into consciousness beside us, we raced toward the door, out into the corridor. There, abruptly, we stopped short, our last wild hopes of escape in that instant blasted. For less than a thousand feet down the great corridor from us, pouring out into it from every quarter of the vast building's interior in answer to the hissing cries of alarm, there was racing down upon us a great mass of hundreds upon hundreds of the writhing serpent-creatures!
_9. A Dash for Freedom_
Doom stared at us in that instant as the serpent-creatures rushed down the great corridor toward us, for well we knew that never could we win our way down the long street to our waiting ship with that pursuit behind us. For a flashing moment as we stood there, stunned, it seemed that recapture was inevitable, and then as a sudden thought flared across my brain I cried out to my companions.
"Get out of the building!" I cried. "I can hold them here----!"
They hesitated, and then sprang down the corridor toward the street, while at the same instant I leapt into the great museum-hall from which we had just emerged. With a single bound I had grasped the needle and tube of restorative red fluid and was at the great transparent cases, ripping the sides open frantically and stabbing the needle with lightning swiftness into their occupants. Those in a dozen or more cases I had swiftly treated thus before I dropped the tube and needle and leapt back to the door, into the corridor. As I did so I had seen the first of the strange, terrible shapes I had touched with the needle beginning to stir, to move from their cases.
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 that 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 loudly, 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 right 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 tight of the great vibration-wall that encircled this universe.
Out between the last of the dying universe'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 mêlée 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_!"