Outside the Universe

by Hamilton Edmond

* * *

Now our cruiser was again flashing on at its very highest speed, straight toward that cluster, while behind us the great swarm whirled chaotically about. Before us the galaxy's suns were burning out in waxing splendor as we shot through space toward them, the cluster of closer-packed suns that was our goal changing now from a ball of solid light into a ball-like mass of thronging, flaming stars as we drew nearer it. But as Jhul Din came back into the pilot room from beneath, as we three contemplated the space-chart and then the great wall of suns in the blackness ahead, our faces set again after our brief triumph, for we knew that billions of miles of space lay still between us and those suns. And now, too, we saw on the chart that the great swarm of ships behind had escaped from the maelstrom's grip at last and was racing after us once more in swift pursuit, a hundred of their ships in the van now of that pursuit with the main body of the swarm behind.

"It's the last stretch!" I exclaimed, as we gazed tensely at the chart and into the void ahead. "Unless we get to the Cancer cluster ahead of them now it's the end."

Our ship was leaping forward still at its uttermost speed, its strained generators functioning nobly, but the great swarm behind was again picking up speed itself, the hundred ships massed together a few million miles ahead of the main swarm hardly more than an inch behind our own ship-dot on the space-chart. On-on-straight toward the fiery mass of the Cancer cluster we fled, while behind us, in cruel repetition of the first part of this wild chase the pursuing ships slowly cut down the gap between us, the hundred foremost ones leaping every moment closer toward us, while behind them the main swarm came on more deliberately. Ahead now the galaxy filled the heavens before us, myriads of burning stars that gemmed the infinite night with their flaming brilliance, but of all in the stupendous scene around and before us we had eyes only for the thronging suns of the Cancer cluster, and for the space-chart above us.

On-on-the minutes of that mad onward flight were passing each like an eternity as we leapt forward, tensely braced there in the pilot room, peering forward, with behind us the hundred pursuing ships close on our track, remorselessly overtaking us, with behind them the great swarm of thousands of ships that were driving to attack our universe. Ahead of us, I knew, there somewhere in the flaming cluster of suns before us, the cruisers of the great Interstellar Patrol, the warships of our universe, would be gathering and massing to meet that great invading fleet, but unless we could escape and lead it into the cluster where they waited they would have no chance for a surprise attack. Before us by now the great cluster lay in waxing, flaming splendor, only a scant few billion miles ahead, its thronging, gathered suns burning out in supreme glory amid the galaxy's looser-swarming suns, but now the hundred foremost ships of the mighty swarm behind were almost upon us.

Even as I turned, now, toward the distance-window behind me, I heard a deep exclamation from Jhul Din, who had turned to gaze back also, and as I too gazed through that window a chill seemed to creep through my very blood, for light-points were showing there in the blackness behind, and drawing swiftly nearer. It was the hundred foremost ships! Ever closer they were racing toward us, overtaking us again with every moment, while far behind them the main swarm raced on after them. With each passing moment the light-points behind were broadening, brightening, as the ships came closer, but now the great cluster ahead loomed full before us, its myriads of flaming, thundering suns drenching all in our pilot room in their fierce, terrific glare. Straight ahead of us, at the mighty cluster's outmost edge, flamed a great double star among all the other thronging stars that made it up, two giant white suns separated only by a comparatively narrow gap. And straight toward that narrow gap our fleeing ship was heading.

Behind us now the hundred long oval ships were drawing into plain sight, their white-lit pilot rooms giving us brief glimpses inside of massed machinery and slender beings we could but half-glimpse that moved inside. From the foremost of those ships, now, there stabbed out toward us the broad, pale, ghostly beam of death, but as yet the gap between us was too wide for the beam to bridge, and we flashed onward still, the gleaming shapes of our pursuers leaping still closer. Before us now the whole firmament seemed a wild chaos of gigantic suns, as we raced straight in toward the mighty cluster, with ahead the narrow gap that separated the two giant white suns toward which we were heading.

Jhul Din gripped my shoulder, pointed ahead, shouted to me over the roar of our generators. "Unless we slacken speed we'll never make it through that gap without driving into one of the suns," he cried.

I shook my head. "It's death either way!" I yelled to him. "Our only chance is to drive between them at full speed."

Now before us the whole heavens seemed a single vast sheet of boiling white flame as we drove in toward the two mighty thundering suns, the gaps between them seeming no more than a narrow black cleft at the terrific velocity at which we were moving. At our topmost speed we rushed toward that narrow gap, the ships behind still leaping full upon our track, closing swiftly down upon us now. And now, as Korus Kan braced himself and held our controls still steady, we were flashing squarely in between the two gigantic suns. On either side of us they towered, thundering, boiling upright oceans of devouring, brilliant white flame, whose awful glare all but blinded us, seeming to fill all the universe about us with one great mass of raging fires. Out toward our onward-flashing ship there licked from the great suns on either side titanic tongues of flame bursting out toward us for millions of miles, huge prominences that could have licked up worlds like midges, but straight on between the walling fires our throbbing ship still flashed.