6. Into the Infinite
Standing at the controls, his tireless metal figure erect as he gazed out into the vast blackness of cosmic space that lay before us, Korus Kan turned from that gaze toward me as I stepped inside the pilot room. Silently I stepped over beside him, and silently, as was our wont, we contemplated the great panorama before us. A stupendous vault of sheer utter darkness it stretched about us, darkness broken only by the misty light of the great universes of thronging suns that floated here and there in this vast void through which we were racing. Behind us our own galaxy lay, just another of those dim glows; for hours had passed since we had launched out into outer space from its edge, and in those hours our awful speed had carried us on through the void through thousands of light-years of space.
But though in those hours of flight our own universe had dwindled to a mere mist of light, those other misty patches that were the universes ahead had hardly grown at all in size or intensity of light, making us realize that even the vast expanse of space through which our ship had already flashed was but a fraction of the gulf that lay between us and the great Andromeda universe. Before us the soft glow that was that universe seemed a little brighter, a little larger, but even so I knew that more than a score of days must elapse before even our ship's tremendous velocity would bring us to it. And even were we able to secure the help we needed, it would still be many days before we could flash back to our own galaxy, and in those days, I well knew, the serpent-invaders would be completing their last plans, tightening their grip on all the suns and worlds of the Cancer cluster, and preparing the way for the vast hordes that soon would cross the void to pour down on that cluster, spreading resistlessly from it across all our galaxy.
It was with heavy heart that I gazed ahead, knowing these things, but my gloomy thoughts were suddenly interrupted by an exclamation from Korus Kan, who had been peering intently forward into the tenebrous void, and who now pointed ahead, toward the right.
"That flicker of light," he said: "you see it?"
I bent forward, gazing to where he was pointing in the heavens before us, and then at last made out in the blackness, not far to the right of the glowing Andromeda universe, another patch of light of equal size, but one whose light was so dim as only to be seen with straining eyes. A mere dim flicker of light it was, in that crowding darkness, but as I gazed at it the nature of it suddenly came clearly to my mind, and I uttered a low exclamation myself.
"The universe of the serpent-creatures!" I said. "It's the dying universe from which they came to invade our own!"
He nodded. "Yes. It's nearer the Andromeda universe than our own, too."
I saw that he was right, and that the two universes, that of Andromeda and this dim, dying one, lay comparatively close to each other, and at almost equal distances from our own, the two forming the base of a long, narrow triangle of which our own universe was the apex. Together we gazed toward that dim flicker of light, in a thoughtful silence. We knew, even as we gazed, what great preparations were going on in that dying universe for the conquest of our own galaxy, what mighty efforts the serpent-races there were making, to complete their vast fleet and the strange, huge weapon which the records we had captured had mentioned, so that they could flash through the void to pour down on our galaxy. The knowledge held us wrapped in thought as our great ship raced on, still holding to its tremendous utmost velocity, rocking and swaying a little as it plunged through the vast ether-currents which swirled about us here in outer space.