"We've beaten them!" Gor Han was bellowing. "They're trying to get away——"
"After them!" I yelled into the speech-instrument. "They're trying to get back inside the coma—they must have some way of getting inside!"
But my order had been unnecessary, for even as the half-dozen great cubes flashed away, our cruisers, still some eight hundred in number, had turned and were racing after them like unleashed hounds after their prey. Downward and backward we raced after them, low across the glowing surface of the great comet, over the deadly coma to where the faint, vast tail issued from it. Ahead we could see the six cubes fleeing onward, at a speed equal to our own, and the sight of them caused us to open to the last notch the power of our throbbing generators for that wild pursuit. Within moments, at that tremendous speed, there came into view ahead the rear rim of the coma's colossal glowing sphere, with the fainter glow that marked the currents of the great tail streaming back from the rim into the void of space.
Swift as were the great cubes ahead, though, our great cruisers of the Interstellar Patrol, speediest of all the galaxy's ships, were proving now to be swifter, since slowly, steadily, we had begun to overhaul those fleeing shapes. I heard Gor Han's deep voice, excited as always in battle, from the speech-instruments, heard Jurt Tul's calm comments as we drove nearer the flying cubes, heard Najus Nar's eager cries. The cubes were passing out now from over the great coma, on over the vast tail, to my puzzlement. I had thought they were striving to gain the interior of the comet, but instead they were racing away from it, while with every moment we were drawing nearer to them. Then, just when it seemed that another moment's flight would bring us upon them, they halted abruptly in space, hovering above the faint, vast-streaming tail, and then plunged straight down into the mighty currents of the tail, and were moving back, inside that tail, toward the great coma behind us!
"The tail!" cried Najus Nar. "They're going up the tail itself and into the coma's heart!"
But I too had seen and had understood all in that moment, had understood what I had not dreamed before, that the only opening through the great coma to the hollow at its heart lay at the coma's rear, and could be reached only by struggling up to it through the awful currents of the tail! These mighty cubes, I saw, had been constructed in that shape especially to resist and endure those terrible, back-sweeping ether-currents set up by the comet's rush through the void, terrific currents glowing with the electrical energy shot backward and dissipated in driving the comet on. The cubes thus specially constructed could brave those colossal currents where weaker craft would be battered to fragments. All this I understood and weighed, in that tense moment, and then had made decision and was shouting back into the instrument before me.
"Down with our ships, too, then!" I cried. "We're going up the tail after them!"
I heard an exclamation from Gor Han, an answering shout from Najus Nar, and then my cruiser and all the cruisers behind us were dipping steeply downward, plunging into the vast and faint-glowing tail! The next moment was one of blind, utter confusion, for as we plunged into the terrific currents our cruisers were whirled up and backward as though by gigantic hands, thrown helplessly like leaves in a terrific wind, cruiser smashing against cruiser and destroying each other there by dozens in that wild moment. Then as the pilot beside me clung to the controls, bringing its bows around to face those mighty currents, heading toward the coma, our ship steadied, while those about it steadied likewise. We had lost half a hundred ships in that first terrific plunge, but neither my own nor those of the three Sub-Chiefs had been injured, and now we were moving slowly up the great currents of the tail toward the coma. The tail about us was to the eyes but a great region of faint light, but far ahead of us there glowed like a crimson wall of light across the heavens the mighty coma, and against it we could make out the dark square shapes of the cube-ships we pursued, likewise fighting their way toward the coma through those terrific currents.
I think now that the moments which followed, as we struggled in pursuit of those cubes, were almost the most terrible I ever experienced, moments in which it seemed impossible that our ships could breast such awful currents and live. About us the currents roared deafeningly, thrilling through every portion of our ships, sweeping against us with titanic power. On and on we struggled, veering to take advantage of weaker currents, blundering into great maelstroms, swaying, plunging, fighting on, with the coma's glowing wall looming ever closer ahead. I heard Gor Han's anxious comments from the instrument before me, glimpsed cruisers here and there behind my own collapsing and sweeping backward, knew that not for long could we fight against those currents and live.