Serpent-ships! My mind was racing with superhuman speed in that instant as they drove down toward us, and I saw that the Antarian was right, that these were the three hundred that had escaped when we were rescued by the Andromedans, and that we thought had fled back to their own universe. Instead they had turned and followed us, knowing that we meant to gather forces to attack their universe, had flashed into the Andromeda universe toward this central world, unseen among the swarms of other ships that were gathering here, and now were swooping down with their score of great disk attraction-ships lowermost, driving down toward us in a fierce, reckless attack. In a single instant it all flashed plain in my mind, and then Korus Kan and I had whirled around, and he was racing back toward the hundred domed sun-swinging ships behind us.
I'll warn these hundred ships." he yelled, as I turned too and raced toward the nearest of the thousands of fighting-ships about us.
Even as I ran toward those thousands of ships, though, their Andromedan crews still unaware of their peril, I saw the massed serpent-ships above slanting straight down toward the hundred domed craft behind me, their attraction-ships hanging motionless above those craft for a moment. I had reached the Andromedan fighting-ships, now, and as the crews of the nearest glided forth to meet me I cried out, pointing upward. They saw the serpent-ships swooping down from above, and then were throwing themselves into their own ships. I raced into one with them, up to the pilot room set near the stem on its long flat upper surface. The Andromedans beside me flung back the controls, then, and our ship and the ships about us were leaping up like light toward the down-rushing serpent-ships.
At the same moment I saw Korus Kan racing into one of the domed sun-swinging ships above which hovered the score of attraction-ships, saw the doors of those domed ships clanging shut as they prepared to escape from the menace above, since they could project their mighty purple force downward only, and would thus be helpless if caught in the attraction-grip of the disk-ships above. A moment more and those hundred domed craft, the most powerful weapon of the great Andromedan fleet, would be safe, I knew. But in that moment, as the three hundred serpent fighting-ships dashed down toward us, I saw the score of hovering attraction-ships glow suddenly with flickering light; the hundred sun-swinging ships beneath were pulled smoothly upward by that tremendous attractive force; and then the attraction-ships, grasping the hundred domed craft that were the heart of our fleet, were racing straight up and outward into space.
13: The Sailing of the Fleet
As that score of glowing disk-ships, with our own hundred sun-swinging craft in their grip, flashed up and out of sight, our fighting-ships were flashing upward with the three hundred fighting-ships of the serpent-creatures racing down to meet us. Then, before we could swerve aside from their mad downward charge to pursue the attraction-ships, they had met us, and in all the world about us there was nothing for the moment but crashing and striking ships. Even as they had flashed down upon us, and we up to meet them, the invisible shafts of force from our cylinders had stabbed up and crossed their downward-reaching death-beams, so that scores of their own ships had crumpled and collapsed in the instant before we met them, scores of ours in turn driving crazily forward and sidewise as the pale beams wiped all life from them in that same moment. As we met them, though, it seemed that our ships and theirs were all to perish alike in crashes in midair, without further need of weapons, so terrific was the impact.
All about us in that moment I glimpsed ships smashing squarely into down-rushing serpent-ships, while our own craft spun and whirled as racing ships grazed along its sides. Then, hanging in the air there a scant mile above the ground, we whirled and grappled with the serpent-craft in a fierce, wild struggle. Their whole aim, we knew, was to keep us occupied long enough to permit the escape of their attraction-ships with our own sun-swinging craft in their grasp, while our object, in turn, was to brush aside these serpent-ships before us and race in pursuit of the attraction-ships. Charge and struggle as we might, though, in the moments following we could not break loose from the fury of the serpent-creatures' attack, who drove toward us with death-beams whirling in all the mad recklessness of despair.
I saw Andromedan ships all about us driving aimlessly away as those pale beams struck them, saw others destroyed by serpent-ships that crashed deliberately into them, and then pouring up from beneath came the masses of the great fleet beneath, thousands of ships that raced up and around the struggling serpent-ships, crumpling and destroying them with countless invisible shafts of force from their cylinders. Within another moment the last of the enemy craft had vanished, but by that time our own ship and a half-thousand others were flashing up in pursuit of the attraction-ships.
Up, up we raced-up until the giant world was but a tiny ball beneath, hanging at the center of the great ring of suns-but then we stopped, and hung motionless. For we were, we saw, too late. About us there stretched only the far-reaching circles of flaming suns that made up the Andromeda universe, with no sign of the attraction-ships or their prey. In those moments that the struggling serpent-craft had held us back, the attraction-ships had flashed out from this universe into the boundless gulf of space, with the hundred sun-swinging craft in their grasp, with Korus Kan himself in one of those ships. On none of our space-charts were they visible, safe from our pursuit out in the void, and we knew that somewhere in that void our sun-swinging craft and all in them were meeting their end, held in the relentless grasp of the attraction-ships and destroyed by them, since the sun-swinging craft could project their own terrific forces only downward. We were too late. Silently, slowly, we slanted back down toward the great central world.
As we came to rest there, among the tens of thousands of other gathered ships, I saw Jhul Din and our followers, aroused from beneath by the battle, running forward to meet me. I saw him glance about as he came toward me, inquiry in his glance, and then I shook my head.