Outside the Universe

by Hamilton Edmond

Never in all our history had any such mighty swarm of matter as this come toward our galaxy from the unplumbed outer void, and at such a speed as this one. For though it was moving slower and slower there on the space-chart, the great swarm was still flashing through space toward the galaxy at more than a thousand light-speeds, a velocity greater than that of any of our ships.

Silently we watched, there in the pilot room, while the swarm of close-massed dots crept across the big space-chart, toward the galaxy and toward the dozen dots that were our ships. Slower and slower still it was moving, its speed smoothly and steadily decreasing as it swept in toward the galaxy from outer space. Such a decrease in speed was strange enough, we knew, but knew too that if the swarm was being borne on toward us by a terrific ether-current its speed would slacken as the speed of the current slackened.

The minutes dragged past, forming into an hour, and another, and another, while we watched and waited there, and steadily still the swarm crept on toward us, moving on now at a steady velocity of five to six hundred light-speeds. Our ships hung silent and motionless still in space, with away to our left the flaming torches of the galaxy's thronging suns, and to our right the great vault of blackness out of which that mighty swarm of matter was rushing toward us.

Straight toward us almost it was heading on the space-chart, and now, as it crept over the last half-inch that separated it on the chart from our ships, I gave an order that sent our ships and those behind it slanting steeply upward. In swift, great spirals our squadron climbed, and within a moment more was hanging thousands of miles higher in space than before, our prows pointed now toward the galaxy. Tensely I watched the space-chart and then, just as the great swarm of black dots reached the dozen dots that were our ships, I uttered a single word, and instantly our squadron was racing toward the galaxy at a full five-hundred light-speeds, moving now at the same speed as the great swarm and hanging thousands of miles above it as it rushed on through space toward the galaxy. It was the familiar maneuver of the Interstellar Patrol in reconnoitenng a meteor-swarm, to hang above it and race at the same speed with it through space, but never yet had we essayed it on such a swarm as this one, moving as it was at an incredible speed for inanimate matter, and without any signs about it of the ether-current which we had thought was the reason for that speed.

Now, as our ships hummed swiftly on, I stood with Jhul Din at the projecting distance-windows, gazing down into the mighty abyss of space that lay beneath us. Somewhere in that abyss, I knew, the great swarm was racing on at the same speed as ourselves, but as we gazed tensely down our eyes met nothing but an impenetrable darkness, the cold, empty blackness of the infinite void. I turned, signaled with my hand to Korus Kan at the controls, and then our ship began to drop smoothly to a lower level as it raced on, following a downward-slanting course now with the ships of our squadron behind close on our track. Down we slanted, still racing onward at the same terrific speed, while the Spican and I searched the darkness beneath with our eyes through the thick-lensed prospecting windows, yet still was nothing visible in the tenebrous void below. Lower, still lower, our ships slanted, and then suddenly Jhul Din gave utterance to a short exclamation.

"Down there!" he cried, pointing down through the little window. "Those shining points-you see them?"

* * *

I gazed tensely down in the direction in which he pointed, and for a time could see nothing still but the infinite unlit blackness. Then suddenly my eyes too made out a few gleaming little points of light in the darkness far beneath us, points of light far separated from each other and driving on through space toward the galaxy far ahead, at the same speed as ourselves. And now, as our ships slanted still down over and toward them, they became more and more numerous to my eyes, a vast, far-flung swarm of fully five thousand gleaming points, spaced a thousand miles from one another, and racing on through space in a great triangular or wedge-shaped formation, the triangle's apex toward the galaxy ahead. The light with which each gleamed made the whole vast swarm seem like a throng of tiny ghosts of stars, driving through the void, though I knew that metallic meteors sometimes shone so with light reflected from the stars.

Never yet, though, had I seen a swarm gathered in such a precise formation as this one, or one that flashed onward at such vast and uniform speed. It was like a scene out of some strange dream, lying there in the black void beneath us, the mighty, silent swarm of light-points whirling on through space at that awful speed toward the massed, burning suns of the galaxy far ahead, out of the mysteries of outer space. Held still silent by the strangeness of it we gazed down upon it, as our ships slanted lower still. Then, as our squadron drove down at last to within a few hundred miles of the great swarm, the nature of those driving points of light became suddenly visible, and we gasped aloud.

For these were no meteors that drove through space in that mighty swarm beneath us! These were no fragments of cosmic wreckage out of the flotsam of smashed worlds and stars! These were mighty, symmetrical shapes of smooth metal, each an elongated oval in form and with rounded ends, each a great ship as large or larger than our own! The front end of each of these great oval ships glowed with white light, the light-points we had glimpsed from above, since the front end of each was transparent-walled like our own pilot room, and brilliantly lit inside. In those white-lit pilot rooms we could half glimpse, as we flashed along, masses of strange machinery and switches, and stranger beings that seemed to move about them, apparently directing the course and speed of their great ships as the whole mighty swarm of them rushed on through space, toward the galaxy's suns ahead.