Glowing ship and glowing bodies, force that rapidly was overcoming us with a dizzy nausea and that was crumbling the walls and machinery about us, the gathered suns of the Andromeda universe far ahead and the glowing half-thousand pursuing ships just behind-all these were but a mad chaos in our minds as we reeled on, farther and farther into the mighty radio-active region. I heard even above the roaring of our generators a clatter of falling metal somewhere toward the ship's rear, while even about us the walls and all else were crumbling, like sugar in water, glowing and disintegrating, as our whole ship was beginning to break up. Now, too, as the great swarm of ships behind raced ever closer a score or more of their number had drawn level with us, on our right, attaining that position by slanting in to cut us off when we had swerved in toward the radio-active region. And as pursued and pursuers raced on, all glowing and disintegrating alike, that score of ships to our right was pressing ever closer toward us.
Nearer they came, and then from their glowing ships toward our own stabbed the pale death-beams, sweeping about us as we flashed on, a shining mark. As they did so, though, our own red shafts burned out swiftly, two of those attacking ships flaring to nothingness beneath them, while with a swift turn to the left Korus Kan had avoided the pale beams. That turn, though, took us now every moment outward once more from the radio-active region's center, forcing us out once more into clear space where the serpent-ships could annihilate us without danger to themselves. Out and out we flashed, and though our ship and all in it still glowed with the fluorescent light, that glow was waning, and the clang of falling metal from beneath, from the ship's disintegrating sides had ceased. Out-out-the score of ships to our right joining with the greater mass behind us again, and all drawing closer toward us, until the tingling nausea that had filled us had vanished, the glowing light of our ships and theirs vanishing likewise. Then, in one great mass, they were leaping again upon us.
Our lives at last within their grasp, they flashed after us and toward us, and I knew that an instant more would see them about us, their death-beams striking at us from all around as they encircled us. I gazed ahead for a moment, to where the giant universe of Andromeda stretched like a great rampart of burning suns across the black, cold heavens, still hours away from us, and then gazed back to where the close-massed hundreds of serpent-ships leapt after and upon us, the death-beam tubes in their sides already swinging toward us. Then in me, at that instant of onrushing doom, there flamed up a strange, wild rage, a fierce, utter fury that had grown in me during all the struggles and flights that had been ours since first we had met these serpent-creatures. I wheeled around to Jhul Din and Korus Kan, my anger breaking from me in a fiery shout.
"Turn the ship square around and halt, Korus Kan!" I cried. "We of the Interstellar Patrol are not going to be picked off as we run-we're going to turn and face them head on."
Korus Kan's eyes flamed at my cry, his hands moved swiftly on the controls, and then our ship had curved suddenly about and had slowed and stopped, swinging around and hanging motionless in space, facing our enemies. Even as we had curved and stopped, they too had swiftly halted, as though suspicious for the moment of some trap, and hung before us in the black gulf of space, facing us. Then there was an instant of utter stillness and silence, as there in the void we faced them, our ship motionless in space, we three in the pilot room gazing toward their own great swarm of ships hanging motionless before us; the mighty Andromeda universe flaming in the heavens behind us, now, and the far, dim glow of the dying serpent-universe in the blackness ahead, and the misty little circle of light that was our own galaxy away to the right; all these lay about us in a silence that was the silence of doom. For a single moment the great tableau held, and then, disdaining to use their attraction-ships upon us now, the great swarm of serpent-ships leapt as one toward us, their hundreds of death-beams stabbing toward us.
But as they did so, as they sprang upon us there in space, there leapt from above and behind us a mighty swarm of other ships-long, slender, flat, gleaming ships entirely different from the oval-shaped serpent-craft, or even from the cigar-like ships of our own galaxy-long, flat ships like none we had ever seen before, that flashed down over and past us straight upon the serpent-fleet! From the sides of these strange new ships there projected thick, squat cylinders that were pointed now toward the serpent-ships before us, and though no ray or beam could be seen issuing from those cylinders, the serpent-ships at which they were aimed were crumpling, were contracting and folding up into shapeless masses of crumpled metal, as though crushed in the grasp of a giant hand! And as that mighty swarm of strange, flat ships flashed down upon the serpent-fleet that reeled back and recoiled from its terrific blows, I heard a wild cry from Korus Kan, as he and Jhul Din stared out with me.
"Strange ships attacking our pursuers." he cried. "They're ships that have come out from the Andromeda universe to save us from the serpent-creatures' pursuit."
11: Into the Andromeda Universe
As the mighty swarm of Andromeda ships from behind us drove down upon the half-thousand serpent-craft ahead, I could only stare for a moment in stupefied surprise, so stunning had been our sudden transition from death to deliverance. I saw the long, flat craft of the Andromedans, a full thousand in number, flashing down on the serpent-ships in one great swoop, saw the latter, in groups, in dozens, in scores, crumpling and constricting as the deadly cylinders of the Andromedan ships were turned toward them. Within an instant, it seemed, a full two hundred of the half-thousand serpent-ships had crumpled and whirled away beneath the terrible, invisible force of the cylinders, though death-beams were raging out thickly all about the swooping Andromedan ships. Then, with almost half their fleet wiped out, the remaining three hundred serpent-ships, including their score of great disk-attraction ships, had whirled around and were racing back into space toward their own dying universe, fleeing from the terrific blows of the attacking ships that had come out from the Andromeda universe ahead, just in time to save us.
Now, as the serpent-fleet flashed from sight, into the void toward its own universe, the thousand Andromedan ships massed swiftly and moved toward our own, that hung still motionless there in the gulf of space. In tense silence we watched them come, hoping that they might not set us down, too, as enemies because of our serpent-ship, but they turned none of their deadly cylinders toward us. Those cylinders, as I was later to learn, were in reality projectors that shot forth a shaft of invisible force, one that caused the ether about any ship it struck to compress about that ship instantly with terrific force, compressing thus into small compass the ether-vibrations that were the matter of the ship, and thus crumpling that matter itself, in an instant. It was a weapon fully as terrible as the crimson destruction-rays of our galaxy's ships or the pale death-beams of the serpent-creatures, a shaft of crumpling force that we knew could destroy us instantly. Instead of loosing it upon us, though, they slanted down until one of the foremost ships was hanging just above our own.