Outside the Universe

by Hamilton Edmond

They nodded silently, and silently we stole past the open door and down the long corridor, toward the door at its end that we knew must lead into the pilot room at the ship's nose. Past other doors we crept, all of them fortunately closed, and as we stole on toward the door at the corridor's end I began to hope that at last our luck had turned. But ironically, even as I hoped, the door at the corridor's end, not a score of feet ahead, slid suddenly aside, and out of it, out of the pilot room beyond it, came one of the writhing serpent-creatures. It stopped short on seeing us, then gave vent to a strange, hissing cry, a high, sibilant call utterly strange to my ears, but at the sound of which the doors all along the corridor behind us slid swiftly open, while through them scores of the serpent-beings writhed out, and upon us.

"The pilot room!" I yelled, above the sudden hissing cries of the serpent-creatures and the shouts of our own crew. "Head for it, Jhul Din!"

Down the corridor we leapt, and out from the pilot room there came to meet us a half-dozen of the serpent-creatures, while one remained inside at the controls still. Then they were rushing toward us, and as they reached us were coiling about us, endeavoring to crush us by encircling us with their bodies and coiling with terrific power about us. As they did so, though, our own metal bars were crashing down among them, sending them to the corridor's floor in masses of crushed flesh as we plunged on toward the pilot room. Now we were through them, had crushed them before us, and were leaping through the door, the single serpent-creature inside wheeling to face us. Before he could spring upon us, though, Jhul Din had lifted him high above his head and then had flung him far down the corridor, where he struck against the wall and fell crushed to the floor. Then Korus Kan was leaping to the controls, swiftly scanning them and then twisting and shifting them, heading the racing ship around in a great curve, away from the Cancer cluster ahead and back in toward the galaxy's center, while Jhul Din and I now sprang back down the corridor to where our crew was struggling fiercely with the hordes of serpent-creatures rushing up from all parts of the ship.

Down that corridor, and down another, through rooms and halls and twisting stairways, down through all the great ship the battle raged, the serpent-creatures leaping and coiling about us with the courage of despair while we strode among them, metal bars smashing down in great strokes, mowing them down before us. Despite their overpowering numbers they were no match for us in such hand-to-hand fighting, and they dared not use ray-tubes, like ourselves, lest they destroy their own ship about them. So we forced them on, ever sending them down in crushed, lifeless masses, as they gradually gave way before us.

I will not tell all that happened in that red time of destruction, but quarter there could be none for these things that had come to attack our universe, that had destroyed our comrade ships in thousands; and so within a half-hour more the last of the serpent-creatures had perished and we were masters of the ship, though but a scant two score of us were left to operate it, so fierce had been the battle.

* * *

Our first action was to clear the ship of dead, casting them loose into space through the space-doors; then Jhul Din and I made our way back into the pilot room, where Korus Kan was holding the ship to a course inward into the galaxy. The controls, he had found, were very much like those of our own cruisers, but the great generators, as we found, were much different. Instead of setting up a vibration in the ether to fling the ship forward, as in our own cruisers, they projected a force which caused a shifting of the ether itself about the ship, forming a small, ceaseless ether-current which moved at colossal speed, bearing the ship with it. The speed could thus be raised or lowered at will by controlling the amount of force projected, and as the general nature of the generators was clear enough the remaining engineers of our crew took charge of them while we fled on into the galaxy.

"We'll head straight for Canopus," I said, indicating the great white star at the galaxy's center far ahead. "We'll report at once to the Council of Suns; our capture of this ship may be of use to them."

While I spoke Korus Kan had opened the power-control wider, and now our newly captured prize was racing through the void toward the mighty central white sun at thousands upon thousands of light-speeds, though I knew that even this terrific velocity, all that we dared use inside the galaxy, was but a fraction of what the ship was capable of in outer space. Glancing about the pilot room, I endeavored for a time to penetrate the purpose of some of the things about me, as we flashed on. Above our window, as in our own cruiser, was a great space-chart, functioning similar to ours, I had no doubt, and showing the dot that was our ship flashing on between the sun-circles that lay about us. There was a device for flashing vari-colored signals, also, such as space-ships inside the galaxy use to show their identity on landing. There was, too, a cabinet containing a great mass of rolls of thin, flexible metal, inscribed with strange, precise little characters that I guessed formed the written language of the serpent-people, though they were beyond all comprehension to me. I turned back to the windows about me, gazing forth into the vista of thronging suns and worlds that lay all about us now as we flashed on into the galaxy toward Canopus.

From all the suns about us, our space-chart showed, great masses of interstellar ships were also flashing inward into the galaxy, the first exodus of the galaxy's people from the outer suns and worlds, driven inward by the fear of these mighty invaders from the outer void who had already destroyed the galaxy's fleet, and were preparing now to grasp all our universe. Far behind us I could see the great ball of suns that was the Cancer cluster, glowing in supreme splendor at the galaxy's edge, and I knew that even now, on the worlds of those thronging suns, the great fleet of the invading serpent-creatures would be settling, would be moving to and fro, wiping out the races that thronged those worlds, wrecking and annihilating the civilizations upon them and making of all the suns and worlds of the great cluster a base for their future attacks upon and conquest of the galaxy. Could we, in any way, save ourselves from that conquest? It seemed hopeless, and now, weary as we were with crushing fatigue from the swift succession of events that had crowded upon us in the last few hours, since our discovery of the invading swarm's approach, it was with a dull despair that I watched Canopus largening ahead as we flashed on toward it.