Outside the Universe

by Hamilton Edmond

We wheeled around, reaching down to help him up, but halted even as we did so. For the serpent-creatures behind us were within yards of us now, hissing cries of triumph rising from them as they writhed toward us. Then, in the next moment, from the great, looming bulk of our ship ahead there stabbed down and over us a shaft of blinding crimson light, a narrow, deadly ray that struck the writhing masses of our pursuers and swept through them in a great, slicing curve, sending them into annihilation in dazzling bursts of light as it touched them. Those farther behind came racing on, nevertheless, but before they could reach us we had stumbled on and into the ship, and with space-doors clanging and generators suddenly droning loud, our ship shot up into the darkness just in time to escape a dozen pale death-beams that sprang toward us from the mass of our pursuers.

Up into the darkness above the vast, blue-glowing city we flashed, Jhul Din and Korus Kan and I bursting up into the pilot room and replacing our follower there whose timely action had saved us. Beneath us the whole city was rising as the alarm spread, lights flashing out here and there among its buildings, serpent-hordes pouring into the streets, while from the landing-circle from which we had just risen there shot up after us a dozen long gleaming oval ships, in close pursuit. So swiftly were they after us that before we had fully realized their nearness, their death-beams were sweeping and slicing through the darkness about us. I shouted a swift order, Korus Kan whirled the controls about and sent our ship flashing straight back into the mass of our dozen pursuers, and then we had leapt through them, our red rays striking lightly and left, as we did so, and two of their great craft had flared there in the darkness above the great city in blinding crimson light, and we were racing up into the darkness again with the ten remaining ships farther behind, but still speeding on our track.

Upward we shot with terrific speed, and in a moment the vast, turning world beneath, covered with the masses of blue force-structures, had contracted and dwindled to a mere point beneath us as we fled up and outward into space. As we flashed up from it, though, I had glimpsed rising from it a full five hundred serpent-ships, with a score of the great disk attraction-ships, and as these lifted to follow the ten that leapt close behind us, I saw that the serpent-creatures were taking no slightest chance of our escape. I turned to Korus Kan, swiftly, as our craft leapt upward, shouting to him above the droning roar of the generators that filled our craft now:

"Head straight out toward the great vibration-wall-toward the opening in it," I cried.

"We'll never get through that opening-between the space-forts." Jhul Din exclaimed. "They'll have received word of our escape, and will be waiting for us."

I shook my head. "We'll have to run between them and take our chance," I yelled. "It's our one chance of escape from this universe."

* * *

Now the giant central world beneath was no longer visible, as we raced upward and outward from it at terrific speed, and ahead loomed one of the three giant suns that lay about that world. We were leaping forward straight toward it, and in an instant it had broadened across the heavens to a stupendous disk of raging crimson fire, a thunderous, titanic sun into which we seemed inevitably doomed to plunge, but as it flared across the firmament before us Korus Kan swerved the controls, and we were flashing by it, past the red star's edge and on outward through the dying universe. Traveling at a speed that was all but suicidal to use inside any universe, thrumming on at all but our utmost velocity, we reeled outward through the throngs of dead and dying stars about us, while behind us at a speed that matched our own our ten pursuers came relentlessly on, with the five hundred-odd ships that we had seen rising from the serpent-city following us in turn.

Out-out-the minutes of that mad outward flight through the dying universe are but a confused, strange memory of a wild, awful race through the massed dead and dying stars that thronged thick about us, and between which we drove with such terrific swiftness that hardly could we glimpse them in passing save on our space-chart. On that chart I saw a close-massed cluster of dark suns full before us, saw the Antarian swing the ship lightning-like sidewise to avoid it, then sharply drive the controls back again as before us a crimson-flaming star about which turned countless worlds of the serpent-people loomed before us. Out-out-flashing crazily on past crimson sun and thundering dark-star, through the massed suns of great dead and dying clusters and past far-swinging planets, with the ten long ships behind clinging remorselessly to us-out-out-until far ahead there became visible across all the heavens before us the wavering pale blue light of the great vibration-wall that encircled this universe.

Out between the last of the dying universe's dark and dying suns we were racing, toward that mighty wall, and as we leapt forward I pointed toward it. "The space-forts!" I exclaimed. "Make for the opening between them, Korus Kan-and slacken speed a little."