He nodded, then pointed out that his cruiser had been damaged somewhat in the battle over the central world. So that it might not delay us we transferred his crew from it to the others, Jurt Tul entering my own cruiser with me, while the damaged one we left there on the cavern's shelf. Then, after we had closed our space-doors, our cruisers moved gently out of the narrow opening, rising swiftly up over the disk-world from the chasm's depths. That disk-world's surface lay beneath us, now, illumined by the coma's far crimson glow alone, a lurid luminescence that picked out streaks and veins of metal here and there in the jagged rock. It was plain, indeed, that these worlds were meteoric in nature, and had been formed and set spinning in this orderly fashion by the comet-creatures themselves.
For the time, though, we heeded not these things, intent on the scene ahead as our five cruisers shot silently through the lurid dusk toward the central world. Far away, now and then, against the coma's baleful glow, we caught sight of cube-ships moving still restlessly about in search of us, and once a party of these seemed to take up our course, to follow us. These, though, veered away in the dusk behind us, and then in a moment more we had passed above that ring of outer disk-worlds, and Jurt Tul and I, gazing forward from the control room, could make out the great, motionless mass of the central world beneath us, the world that was our goal. No light gleamed upon its darkened surface, lying in a weird picture there in the coma's crimson dusk. As we shot down toward it I saw vaguely in that dusk the great, massed machines here and there, the smooth streets, the enigmatic pits about them, and then the great clearing at the flat world's center.
"That clearing!" I whispered to Jurt Tul. "It was near it that Gor Han's and Najus Nar's ships fell—we'll land near it."
Our cruisers now were arrowing smoothly down toward one of the broader streets some distance from the clearing, since we could see now that on all the world below there moved only an occasional dark liquid-creature, the throngs we had seen before having unaccountably disappeared. Here and there above it moved a cube-ship, but none of these glimpsed us through the dusk, and in a moment more our cruisers had landed gently upon one of the smooth streets. There Jurt Tul and I swiftly stepped forth, for we had decided that we two alone could explore the comet-city more silently than a larger party. At once the cruisers swept back to wait for us in the dusk above, ready to make an attempt at escape from the comet should we be discovered. Then the amphibian and I moved swiftly along that silent street toward the great central plaza.
On each side of us loomed great massed machines at which we merely glanced as we hurried on. As we passed one of the pits that had puzzled me, though, I stepped to its edge, gazed down, then shrank back in horror! For in that shallow, smooth-walled pit there lay what seemed a great pool of thick black liquid unguessably deep, a pool formed by the liquid bodies of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the liquid comet-creatures that had poured into it! I could glimpse the white eyes floating in it, here and there, but there was no other sign of life or movement in the mass, and as I saw that and thought of the rows upon rows of other similar pits that extended across the comet-city, I understood, and turned swiftly to Jurt Tul.
"Sleeping!" I exclaimed. "In their night, their rest-period, they must all pour into these pits together—mingling their liquid bodies!"
Swiftly we shrank back from the great pit, moved on toward the clearing. Massed machines, grim and gleaming and towering, loomed all about us, half seen in the crimson dusk, and we passed scores of the great, liquid-filled pits in which slept the comet-creatures, but there was no sign of our two friends. Had they been destroyed? Dread filled me, dread intensified because I realized that soon the comet-creatures would be ending their night, and turning on their white light of day, discovering us there on their world. Then, abruptly, Jurt Tul jerked me back from my forward stride, crouching silently with me upon the street, behind a mass of great mechanisms. For out of the darkness to our right had come the sound of something moving, something approaching us! Silently, tensely, we crouched there, and saw a dark shape moving stealthily down one of the branching streets toward us. It had turned from us, toward the great clearing ahead, when unexpectedly, as we crouched, my arm had brushed against the great machine beside us and touched something that moved beneath the touch, with a loud metallic clicking. Instantly that dark shape ahead had turned, and then was leaping straight toward us!
Before we could rise to meet it the rush of it had borne us downward, and as it did so I realized with a wild thrill that it was not a liquid-creature but a great and warm and fur-covered being, many-limbed, that had attacked us! Even as that fact penetrated into my brain our struggle had abruptly ceased, and we were staggering erect, Jurt Tul and I grasping the other.
"Gor Han!" I exclaimed. "It's you!"
The great Betelgeusan's fur-covered body and strange features were clearly visible to us now as he grasped our own hands, his eyes wide.