Outside the Universe

by Hamilton Edmond

Struggling in the grip of a half-dozen of the alien creatures, I heard Jhul Din shouting hoarsely, saw him finally pulled from his feet also by a great mass of writhing things, and then Korus Kan and the remainder of our crew were overcome too, and within another moment all was over. Scores of the serpent-creatures lay dead about us, but with them lay many of our own crew; not more than a bare score were left to us now of all our party. Gripped tightly still by the serpent-creatures, we were thrust down a narrow stair and into an empty little storeroom beneath the pilot room, in its metal walls but a single space-window giving a view forward. The door snapped shut as the last of us were thrust inside, and then our captors had left us, the lashings that had snared our ship were cast loose by the ships on either side, and as the humming of the generators waxed loud again our ship and those about it began to move once more through space.

"They're heading now toward the dying universe," exclaimed Korus Kan, gazing through the single window into the black gulf outside. "They're going to take us there as prisoners."

But I too, gazing through the window at his side, had seen that our ship's prow was turning now toward the right, so that ahead now instead of the great glowing mass of the Andromeda universe there lay the dim, faintly glowing patch of light that was the serpent-peoples' waning universe. To it now our ship and the ships about us were flashing at greater and greater speed, and as they hummed on the despair that had already gripped me deepened. It was not the peril in which we ourselves lay that affected me, for well I knew that from the moment of our capture our fate had been sealed, and that our temporary reprieve from death meant only that some more horrible fate awaited us in the dying universe. It was that the last chance of our own universe had vanished with our capture, the last hope to summon from the Andromeda universe the help that could save our galaxy gone now forever.

In a silence of utter despair I gazed ahead as our ship and those about it hummed on, while Jhul Din and Korus Kan and all the survivors of our crew prisoned with us maintained the same despairing silence. There was no plan for escape, no suggestion of it, even, for well we knew the impossibility of even winning clear of the room that was our prison, not to speak of overcoming the hordes of serpent-creatures who now operated our ship. In a strange apathy of spirit we sat and stood, hour after hour, speaking little. Our eyes and minds turned only to the window through which we could see, in the black abyss of space ahead, the faintly glowing universe of the serpent-people broadening slowly ahead as our ships raced on at full speed toward it.

* * *

A day passed, and that dying universe had grown across a full third of the vault of space before us, a great, dim-glowing region of flickering luminescence utterly different from the radiance of the shining Andromeda universe, that lay now far to our left. On and on the serpent-ships raced, unceasingly, hour upon hour, until at last on the third day of our imprisonment their speed began to slacken, the drone of the great generators falling a little in pitch as they drew near at last to their galaxy, that had expanded outward now until it seemed to fill all the heavens before us, so strange a spectacle to our eyes that almost we forgot our own predicament and despair in contemplation of it.

Full in the heavens before us it lay, a mighty galaxy fully as large as our own, as the Andromeda universe, but infinitely different, a galaxy not of life but of death. In all its mighty mass were no flaming white or blue or yellow suns like those of our own galaxy, no brilliant young stars surrounded by circling, sun-warmed worlds. Here was only a vast forest of dead and dying suns, stretched across the heavens, huge throngs of dark, burned-out stars, cold and black and barren, that crowded thick upon one another, with here and there a few dying suns of dark, smoky red, somber crimson stars in the last stages of stellar evolution. It was with the light of these few alone that the great mass faintly glowed, an expiring universe in which all light and life were sinking into darkness and death.

Silent with awe and wonder we watched as our ships drove in toward this darkening galaxy, and then I began to make out, between us and it, a strange, constant flicker of blue light that seemed to extend all about the faint-glowing universe before us. Stronger that flicker was growing as we sped on toward it, though through it there shone clearly as ever the light of the crimson suns beyond it. At last we seemed racing straight into it, and now I saw that it was a colossal globular shell of flickering blue light, almost invisible, that enclosed within itself all the mighty, circular mass of the dying universe before us. Our ships seemed about to flash straight into it, but now turned sharply to the left, speeding along the great light-barrier's edge. A ship beside us, though, had turned a little too late and had struck the light-wall while turning, and as it did so I saw it rebounding back with terrific force as though in collision with a solid wall, its whole prow crumpled by the impact. Then, at last, I comprehended the nature of this vast shell of flickering blue light that enclosed the dying universe.

"It's a vibration-wall." I cried to my companions. "A great wall of etheric vibrations enclosing all this universe."

For I saw now that that was the great barrier's nature. It was a mighty shell of perpetual vibrations in the ether itself, extending all about the universe before us, allowing light and electro-magnetic communication waves to pass through it, unchanged, but excluding and holding out the vibrations of matter, by meeting them, as I knew must be the case, with a vibration of equal frequency which opposed them, reflected them back, forming a barrier more impenetrable than any of solid matter, yet one all but invisible, extending about all this mighty universe, excluding from it for all time all matter from outside. Too, as I was later to learn, the great vibration-wall was impenetrable to the heat-vibrations, reflecting those of its dying suns that struck it back into the universe inside. It was for this purpose that the vast barrier had been erected, as the suns of the serpent-people failed, to prevent the escape of any of the precious heat-radiations of their few living suns, and also to place about all their universe a wall impenetrable to all invaders. Set in the ether about their universe eons before, the vibrations that made up the great barrier were perpetual and undying, a vast wall of defense about the serpent-universe.