Hour upon hour of swift flight was dropping behind us as we raced steadily and smoothly on, detouring far around the great heat-regions and radio-active regions that we encountered, heading on toward the serpent-universe that was glowing ever broader before us. Smooth, immeasurable and endless they seemed, those hours of swift and steady flight, but at last we became aware that they were coming to an end, the dying universe ahead a great dim glow across all the blackness of the firmament. Ever our eyes hung upon that misty region of light as we flashed nearer and nearer to it, and ever the same doubt, the same wonder, rose and grew in our minds. Could we, really, crush and destroy the serpent-peoples in this strange universe? What would be the outcome of the tremendous battle we must fight in it to prevent the serpent-hordes from pouring across space toward our own universe?
Before us now the somber splendor of the dying universe filled the heavens, a vast mass of dead and dying suns, black and burned-out stars and suns of smoky crimson, glowing in the blackness of space like the embers of a mighty, dying fire. Around that great, dim-glowing mass we could make out the gigantic shell of flickering blue light, all but invisible, that surrounded it, the titanic and impenetrable wall of vibrations that enclosed it. In toward that wall our vast fleet was racing, moving at slackening speed as I touched a key before me, until at last the mighty flickering barrier loomed close ahead, the single opening in it, guarded by the huge space-forts on each side, lying straight before us. And as we drew within sight of that opening we saw, hanging in space just inside it, massed solidly across it, a thousand oval ships!
"The serpent-ships!" I exclaimed. "They're going to hold the gate of their universe against us!"
Jhul Din was staring at them as though puzzled. "But why only a thousand ships?" he said. "Why haven't they massed all their great fleet there at the gate——"
But I had turned, had pressed the keys before me in swift succession, and at once our tremendous fleet had slowed and smoothly halted, hanging there in space. Then, as I depressed still other keys, our vast mass of ships split smoothly into three separate masses, my flag-ship at the van of the central mass, the others moving to right and to left of us. A moment our three great masses of ships hung there, and then those on either side of us had flashed toward the great space-forts that guarded each side of the great opening, while our own central mass, my ship at its head, drove straight in toward the great opening itself!
Straight toward and into the opening raced our close-massed ships and then the next moment it seemed that all the universe about was transformed into a single awful mass of pale beams that stabbed toward and through us from the space-forts on each side and from the close-massed ships ahead. How our own ship escaped annihilation in that first moment of terrific, reeling shock, I can not guess; since behind and about us scores of our ships were driving crazily away, their occupants annihilated by the deadly beams. Yet from all our own craft, reeling blindly as they were there in the opening, our cylinders were loosing their shafts of invisible force upon the space-forts to each side and upon the serpent-ships that leapt toward us from ahead.
Then as those ships met ours, there in the narrow opening with the huge towering space-forts at each side, there ensued a moment of battle so terrific—battle more awful in its concentrated fury than any I had ever yet experienced—that it seemed impossible that ships and living beings could fight thus and live. Terrific was the scene about us—the vast black vault of infinite outer space behind us, the far-flung, dim-glowing mass of the dying universe before us, the gigantic wall of pale blue flickering light that separated the two, the single opening in that wall, flanked by the titanic metal space-forts, in which our thousands of close-massed ships charged forward toward the onrushing serpent-ships.
Ships were crashing and smashing as we met them, death-beams were whirling thick from their ships and from the huge space-forts, serpent-craft were crumpling and collapsing beneath our shafts of force—and still our own ships were reeling away in scores as the death-beams found them. I knew that not for long could we continue this suicidal combat, since though the serpent-ships before us were being swiftly wiped out, the space-forts on each side still played their beams upon us with deadly effect. The other two divisions of our great fleet, dashing to attack the space-forts from outside while we battled there in the opening between them, had been thrust back, I saw, from each attack by the masses of pale beams that sprang from the forts.
But as the whole struggle hung thus in doubt, as our ships fell in fierce battle there in the opening beneath the beams of the forts, I saw a score of ships among those attacking the right-hand fort drive suddenly toward that fort with all their terrific utmost speed, leaping toward it like great thunderbolts of metal. From the great castle the death-beams sprang toward that score of ships, sweeping through them and wiping all life instantly from them, but before the ships had time to swerve or reel aside from that mad onward flight their terrific speed had carried them onward, and with a mighty, shattering collision they had crashed straight into the great fort's side.