Outside the Universe

16: From Outside the Universe!

The moment that followed was one of action and combat on such a scale as to stun the senses. Even as the great fleet of our galaxy rushed forward upon the serpent-fleet that had recoiled before it, the far-scattered ships of our own great armada had had time to rush in toward me again, to mass behind me. Then, as my fingers flashed down on the signal-keys, our own Andromedan fleet and the mighty galaxy-fleet above us were leaping as one toward the serpent-ships. Before those ships had time to dodge us we were upon them and our own beneath them, and as we flashed thus above and beneath them thousands of deadly force-shafts struck up toward the serpent-ships from beneath, while from above countless brilliant crimson rays burned down toward them.

It was a scene unimaginable, that, as the three great fleets crossed and clashed. Three titanic armadas, each of thousands of close-massed mighty ships, that whirled and struck and ran there in the space between the crowding stars, three far-distant universes coming at last to death-grips within one of those universes. Flashing beneath the serpent-fleet it seemed that in all the firmament above us was but a single vast mass of oval ships, and as our invisible force-shafts stabbed up in swift revenge toward those ships they were crumpling here and there, collapsing and falling, whirling away toward the nearest of the thundering suns about us, while other ships among and above them were flaring wildly in great explosions of crimson light and vanishing as the annihilating rays of the fleet of the Federated Suns struck down upon them from above.

Thousands of ships, I think, must have gone into annihilation in that first wild rush of the three fleets, for ships all about our own were reeling blindly away as the pale beams that whirled down from above swept through them. Upward and downward those ghostly beams were leaping thick, finding their mark in many of the ships of our two fleets, but it was the serpent-fleet that suffered most in that mad rush. Caught as they were between the deadly fires of both our fleets, though only in the moment that we flashed past, their ships had yet vanished by hundreds, by thousands, as force-shaft and red ray flashed and stabbed among them. I heard Jhul Din shouting with mad joy as we shot past them beneath, heard, too, the cries of our few followers among the Andromedan crew beneath, and then we were past them, were pausing in space, as I pressed the keys of the fleet-control, and were turning to rush back for another blow.

Above us now the great galaxy-fleet was turning likewise, slanting down beside us, and then our two fleets were leaping together back toward the serpent-ships. They had courage, the beings in those ships, for though now the tables were turned and it was we who outnumbered them, they had turned, massed still closely together, and were racing forward to meet us. By this time our mighty battle had reeled sidewise toward one of the near-by suns, a great double yellow star that flamed to our left in growing, awful glory as we raced across the firmament toward it; but no thought did we give it in that wild moment, since ahead the serpent-fleet, forming suddenly into a long wedge, was racing toward us. On it came, heading straight toward our two fleets that flashed to meet it, and then just before it reached those fleets it veered swiftly sidewise, to pass by the side of our own fleet, raking us with its beams while our own ships should mask them from the rays of the galaxy-fleet.

In the instant that they had veered, though, I had seen their maneuver, had pressed lightning-like on the keys before me. Instantly our own great fleet shot sharply sidewise also, so far sidewise in that moment that instead of racing past us the serpent-fleet flashed between us and the galaxy-fleet. And again, as they ran the gantlet of the terrible rays and force-shafts of our two fleets, their ships were crumpling and vanishing in flares of light, through all their mighty mass. Another such deadly blow and we would have shattered their fleet, I knew, and as the serpent-ships shot past us and beyond us, their own death-beams stabbing out sullenly still, our two great armadas were turning again, were wheeling and flashing back again for another great blow, while to our side the twin great golden suns toward which we were swaying were looming now in dazzling grandeur.

Backward, side by side, our two vast fleets shot once more, and before us the serpent-ships were whirling again upon us. Surely no such struggle to the death had any universe ever seen as this one, in which all of our three great fleets seemed intent only on grappling there until all were destroyed. On toward us the serpent-ships were flashing, all things before and about us bathed now in the dazzling glare of the stupendous yellow suns to our left; then, just as their great fleet had almost reached our own two fleets, racing forward to meet it, they had dipped, had dived sharply downward to pass beneath us. But in that same moment, with the same idea, I had pressed the keys before me and our own fleet, and the galaxy-fleet with us, had dipped down also, rushing forward; and then in the next wild instant our two great fleets and that of the serpent-creatures had collided, had crashed head on there in space.

I had only a blinding vision of those thousands of mighty ships rushing toward us, and we toward them, and then it seemed that in all the universe about us was nothing but colliding mighty shapes of metal, oval and cigar-like and long and flat, as our two massed fleets crashed into their own. How our own ship escaped, in the van of our fleet, I can not guess, for space about us in that moment was but a single awful mass of shattered and shattering vessels. Crashing into each other head on, transformed in an instant from gleaming, leaping craft to mere twisted wrecks of metal, went the thousands of ships about us, perishing in thousands in that colossal shock. Before us there seemed only a single mass of great oval ships leaping toward us, serpent-pilots plainly visible for a flashing moment in their white-lit pilot rooms, and then our craft was twisting and swaying and ducking like a mad thing as Jhul Din shot it this way and that to avoid the ships before us.

Then, as the impetus of that mighty rush of the three fleets vanished with their awful crash together, they were hanging there, each fleet mixed and mingled now with the others in that wild, crashing moment, no longer three vast organized fleets but a single colossal mass of countless ships, struggling together, ship to ship, in one tremendous field of battle there between the suns. It was as though, in that moment, space about us had become suddenly peopled thick with struggling ships, before and ahead, to each side and above and below, striking at each other with red ray or pale beam of invisible force-shaft, whirling and crashing into each other with inconceivable fury.

Out of the mass before us a single serpent-ship was rushing head on toward us. As Jhul Din swerved our ship sharply up to avoid collision with it, its death-beam leapt toward us, but again we leapt sidewise and upward to avoid that beam and it shot past us and instantly wiped the life from one of the cigar-like galaxy-ships behind us. As it did so, though, our force-shafts were stabbing from their cylinders as our Andromedans beneath swiftly turned them, and then the ship ahead had crumpled and vanished; while across and above us shot other pale beams from beyond as another serpent-ship leapt to take its place.

Crash! — a mighty shock flung us sidewise as our craft reeled over, and we glimpsed a serpent-ship that had flashed down on us from above, grazing past us. Our force-shafts leapt from the cylinders toward it, missed it, and then as its death-beams whirled toward us in passing there burned past us from behind a brilliant red ray that touched it and destroyed it in a great burst of crimson light. Then in the next instant our cylinders were swinging toward a trio of close-ranked serpent-ships that were rushing toward us, one behind the other. The death-beams of the foremost leapt out, seared along the edge of our ship, but at the same moment that foremost ship had crumpled suddenly beneath our force shafts, and before the two behind it could swerve they had crashed into that twisted wreck of metal and into each other. Then all three buckled, shattered hulks were drifting sidewise from the battle.

But now all about us an awful glare was growing, and as we whirled and struck there I looked up to see that our titanic mass of tens of thousands of struggling ships, whirling on with all their speed and striking with all their power at each other, were drifting blindly toward the two flaming yellow suns that loomed now in dazzling size and splendor just before us. Yet on, on we were whirling, stabbing, soaring and vanishing, locked still in the colossal death-grip of universes, on until all about and before us was nothing but thundering, blinding walls of flame as we reeled sidewise into those two great suns.

Even as we soared and struck there, our force-shafts stabbing in crumpling death toward the serpent-ships that leapt toward us, I saw that far away on each side the vast mass of struggling ships, extending as far as the eye could reach, was reeling sidewise with us, vanishing already by scores and by hundreds as they reeled into the out-leaping fiery prominences of the giant golden suns before us. Yet on and on we were whirling still, all organization and plan gone now, with the two thundering suns beside us like vast ramparts of blazing fire across all the heavens, into which we were moving. Then suddenly those ramparts were all about us, titanic walls of awful flame that seemed to enclose the great mass of our thousands of struggling ships, and as we dipped and struck and ran I saw that our great masses were reeling in between the two suns.

On we went, our gigantic mass of grappling craft staggering into that narrow gap between the great suns, with their awful roaring fires all about us, now. Hundreds after hundreds of ships on the edge of our struggling mass were vanishing in those fires as they reeled too far to the side, or were licked up by the mighty, outrushing prominences, only tiny spurts of flame marking their end. Yet still we whirled and smote at each other, there, until the walls of stupendous fire about us had dropped back, until we were reeling out from between the suns, staggering through them, and were swaying on into the space ahead of us, raging on between the galaxy's thundering suns in our colossal battle of giants.

Reeling thus onward in mad combat I saw for an instant that now among the suns before us there stretched the gigantic, glowing mass of the great nebula we had glimpsed to the left at the battle's beginning, a tremendous ocean of flaming gas there in the heavens toward which our vast field of struggling ships was swaying. I saw, too, that but a score of thousands of ships were left now of each of the three great mingled struggling fleets, and then all else left my mind as fiercely toward us swooped again a pair of the serpent-ships about us, one beneath and one above with their death-beams stabbing up and down toward us as they drove upon us.

At the instant they did so our cylinders had shot down crumpling death upon the uprushing ship beneath, and then, as the one above leapt down toward us before the shafts could be turned on it, Jhul Din whirled our craft up in a great leap, the sharp prow of our ship ripping through the rear end of that ship as though through paper, annihilating all in that ship as the awful cold of airless space rushed into it. An instant it hung there, all dead in it that instant, and then, before it could drive aimlessly away, a shaft of red rays stabbing out of the great melee behind us had touched it and destroyed it.

Now before us, as we reeled on in that terrific battle that seemed to us to have endured for ages, there was glowing a great mass of light in the heavens, the stupendous cloud of flaming gas that was the nebula ahead, glowing there among the galaxy's stars that seemed but tiny sparks beside it. Straight toward its flaming mass our ships were whirling, locked still in our awful grapple. For the moment I turned from it, though, as in the struggling mass beside us three serpent-ships flashed down upon a single galaxy-ship. Our force-shafts shot out and crumpled one of them even as it flashed down, while at the same instant the crimson rays of the attacked ship annihilated another. In the same moment, though, the death-beams of the third ship had leapt downward, had swept through the galaxy-ship from stem to stern, annihilating all life inside it and sending it crashing away into the mass of struggling craft about it, while the third serpent-ship leapt toward us. But at that moment, over the throb of our generators and the hiss of our force-shafts, there came to my ears a dull, tremendous roaring sound that drowned out all else, while about us at the same time, about all the ships of our onward-reeling mass, was flooding a vast sea of flaming gas, a fiery ocean into which we were whirling.

"The battle's going inside the nebula!" yelled Jhul Din, over the thunderous roar of flame about us.

"Hold our ship with the rest!" I shouted thickly back to him. "It's going to be fought to the end this time."

Now all about us was a single titanic ocean of glowing gas, as our thousands of struggling ships reeled into the great nebula's raging fires. Through those fires we could make out dimly the shapes of the ships about us, whirling and battling on still in that hell of flame, the heat-resistant hulls of them all enabling them to withstand the comparatively low temperature of the nebula's sea of flame. On and on, striking, whirling, grappling, we raged, force-shafts and death-beams and crimson rays stabbing through the glowing gases that flooded between us, carrying death and destruction still from ship to struggling ship. For still ships were flaring crimson and vanishing, were staggering aimlessly away as the pale beams swept them, or were crumpling and collapsing as our force-shafts struck them, all life inside them annihilated as they collapsed by the inrushing sea of flame, now.

Our titanic battle had reached its height, its climax, I knew, and with the fierce, desperate fury born of that realization, our ships were leaping upon the serpent-craft. It was a battle out of nightmare, that awful struggle, a battle of the thousands of ships of three great universes that grappled with each other to the death there in that hell of thundering flame. Gaseous Andromedans in their long, flat ships, writhing serpent-creatures with their oval craft, strange, dissimilar shapes from the races of all the galaxy's suns in their great, cigar-like hulls-all swayed and smote and stabbed there together in that stupendous struggle, pale beam and red ray and unseen shaft of force whirling this way and that through the seas of raging fire through which we reeled. On and on we whirled, all thought of everything but the enemy ships before us gone as each of the thousands of ships struck out with all its powers for its races, its universe.

Swiftly now, rocking and grappling there in the nebula's glowing ocean, with flame above and below and on each side and all about us, ships around us were vanishing, crashing into each other blindly amid the roaring fires, taking deadly toll of each other with their mighty weapons. But ever more swiftly, assailed on all sides by our terrific attack, the serpent-ships were decreasing in number, and though our own craft whirled to death about us also I saw that rapidly the serpent-ships were being annihilated in scores and hundreds as with the fury of utter reckless single-mindedness we leapt upon them. Thousands by thousands their ships were vanishing, and though hardly a score of thousands of ships remained now of our two mighty fleets the serpent-ships had been reduced to a fourth of that number by our terrible attack.

Still upon them we sprang, there in the nebula's fires, our force-shafts and red rays whirling ceaselessly through the thundering flames about us toward them, though sullenly still their beams sprang to meet us. Through that inferno of flame, between and through the whirling ships about us, our own craft leapt, its cylinders still stabbing forth crumpling death to the oval ships about us, and then suddenly, in answer to some signal flashed among them, all those oval craft, those serpent-ships, had driven swiftly upward from the mighty battle, into the roaring fires above us. In those fires, while we too drove up through the flaming ocean in pursuit of them, they gathered for an instant, massing together, and then were flashing away, through the nebula's flaming sea and out of it into open space once more, flashing together back toward the galaxy's edge.

"The Cancer cluster," Jhul Din was screaming, now. "They're in flight-they're heading back toward the cluster."

But already I had pressed swiftly on the keys before me, and about us our ships were massing again, the galaxy-ships with us now; and then close-massed together we were racing outward, too, out of the mighty sea of flame about us, bursting out of the titanic nebula into the open spaces of the galaxy once more, its thronging suns all about us. Through those suns, back toward the galaxy's edge in swift flight, the five thousand remaining serpent-ships were flashing, the only surviving remnant of their vast fleet, that our two armadas had conquered and all but destroyed. Back toward the Cancer cluster they were fleeing, upon whose thronging worlds all the hordes of the serpent-races were massed, and within which those hordes, we knew, would be laboring still to complete the great cone that now we could destroy. So on after them our own fleet leapt, a score of thousands of mighty ships in close formation thundering after our flying enemy.

Past mighty, flaming suns we were racing, in pursuit, past slow-turning great worlds that moved about those suns and that we raced between and past, through the galaxy's giant stars toward its edge, toward the Cancer cluster. On-on-after the fleeing serpent-craft we raced, until far before us through the crowding suns there came into view the great cluster toward which they were heading, a gigantic, globular swarm of suns there at the galaxy's edge. The serpent-ships had reached it, now, were dropping swiftly down toward it, and as we too flashed above it we dropped after them in hot pursuit. Down-down-the great ball of flaming suns was growing swiftly in size as we neared it, the countless thronging worlds between those suns, packed now with the serpent-races, visible beneath-down-down-and then suddenly, in obedience to some unseen order, the serpent-ships fleeing downward beneath us had halted, had turned, and then were driving straight back up toward us.

So utterly unlocked for was that swift, fierce attack that before we could swerve aside our downward-rushing thousands of craft had crashed straight into the uprushing serpent-ships. Then the moment after that wild shock in which hundreds, thousands of ships had smashed head-on together, there was battle again there above that mighty ball of suns, with the giant splendor of our galaxy to one side and the infinite vault of outer space to the other, a battle such as in sheer, concentrated intensity none of us had ever yet experienced. Like senseless mechanisms, with the mad energy of despair, the serpent-ships drove toward us, flinging away their lives to hold us longer from the great cluster beneath and its crowded, serpent-peopled worlds, throwing themselves upon us with such awful fierceness that, outnumbering them as we did, our fleet reeled and staggered there beneath their blows.

Our ships were falling by the hundreds each moment, but now we gripped ourselves, sprang upon the attacking serpent-ships with a fury that matched their own, summoning all the strength of despair ourselves as the vast battle hung thus in the balance, ourselves leaping down upon the serpent-ships with a suicidal recklessness that sent them into annihilation swiftly beneath us. For a single wild moment, it seemed, their ships and ours alike had gathered their utmost powers for one last supreme effort, were throwing themselves upon each other with a last mad burst of strength, and in that moment death-beam and red ray and unseen force-shafts flashed thick through space from ship to ship. Then the serpent-ships were thinning in number before us, fewer and fewer, as regardless of our losses we pressed our fierce attack, until at last but a scant score of them remained, a score that in the next moment were gone also, flaring crimson or crumpling and collapsing. A battered remnant of what had once been two tremendous fleets, but ten thousand ships left of all our countless thousands we hung there in space above the cluster-alone. The serpent-ships were gone at last. The serpent-fleet was no more.

"We've won!" My cry of triumph was taken up and repeated, by Jhul Din beside me, by our followers beneath, by all, I knew, in our ships about us as we hung there. We had won. Had annihilated to the last one the countless serpent-ships, there in awful battle, reeling with them out of the outer void and through the galaxy, through thundering suns and whirling worlds, past dark-star and comet, through the mighty flames of the great nebula. Had swept the last of their fleet from space and now were moving down toward the great cluster beneath, toward the thronging suns and countless worlds among them, where all the hordes of the serpent-races were massed, dropping down to destroy the last mighty mechanism with which they had sought to conquer and annihilate us. We had-

But what was that below? Our downward-rushing ships had paused, millions of miles still above the great cluster, and we were gazing down toward it, toward a vast, dark shape that was rising from among its swarming suns! A colossal dark cone, that was coming slowly, deliberately, up among those suns and at sight of which our cries had died on our lips, our faces masks of blank horror! It was the mighty death-beam cone of the serpent-creatures! It was the colossal generator of death that they had brought with them unfinished from the dying universe, that their serpent-hordes in the cluster beneath had labored upon while we had fought our mighty battle, and that now, while the last of the serpent-ships had held us back a moment longer, they had completed. Up toward us it was coming, slowly rising among the mighty cluster's suns, ponderously, deliberately, and we knew that in a moment more it would be rising out of that cluster, would be annihilating all life in our ships with a single sweep of its colossal beams of death, would be sailing deliberately on to wipe all the life from the galaxy's worlds, and give those worlds forever to the serpent-hordes massed in the cluster beneath! We had not won, but lost.

There was a silence-a silence of death-in that moment, as the stupendous cone rose up through the ball of suns beneath. Still, silent, we hung there-our doom rising up beneath us-a moment in which there whirled through my brain confused, swift visions-our awful battle in vain-our universe and the Andromeda universe the serpent-peoples', our races gone forever-and then suddenly into my whirling brain there penetrated a choking cry. It was from Jhul Din, and he was at the window, strangling, staggering, pointing out into the black void of outer space beside us, out to where a little swarm of great shapes were rushing headlong toward us out of that void. A hundred great shapes that were like mighty hemispheres of metal, domed and flat-bottomed and gleaming-

"It's the sun-swinging ships!" Jhul Din's great cry stabbed into my dazed brain like a sword of sound. "It's Korus Kan and the sun-swinging ships. They escaped from the attraction-ships that captured them-have come across the void after us-"

The sun-swinging ships. The ships that with Korus Kan in them had been captured and that we had thought destroyed, but that somehow, in the void outside the Andromeda universe, had escaped from the attraction-ships that held them, had sped across the void after us and were now racing in among us, hanging above the giant cluster of suns beneath, up through which the great cone of doom was rising. Then from those hundred domed ships hanging there, there sprang downward vast, broad rays of dark, purple-glowing force, the force with which the Andromedans had moved all their suns, vast rays that spread out fanwise as they shot down and that formed a continuous, unbroken wall of purple-glowing force about all the great cluster beneath, screening all in that cluster from the gravitational pull of everything outside, from the pull of the galaxy that alone counterbalanced the attraction of the cluster's suns toward each other. And as that counterbalancing pull was shut off that alone had held the suns of the giant cluster in their balanced positions, those suns began slowly to move-to move toward each other.

Slowly at first they moved, and then faster and faster, sweeping majestically in toward each other, the whole giant cluster of swarming suns contracting, condensing. Inward they moved, and now sun was crashing into sun, at the cluster's center, sending up towering bursts of awful flame as they met in titanic shock. Inward the thronging, blazing suns swept still, crashing now through all the cluster into each other, worlds that circled about them vanishing in great bursts of fire as they plunged into or were caught between the suns that crashed about them. Almost to the great cluster's top had the giant death-cone reached, as the suns about and below it hurtled inward to doom, and then we saw two mighty suns on each side of it that were rushing inward and toward it, converging upon it, annihilating themselves and it together in the gigantic shock of their collision. On and on, sun moving into sun, they went, all the worlds about them vanishing into their fires, annihilating forever all the serpent-hordes that had massed upon them, all matter and all life inside that cluster perishing as its thundering suns crashed gigantically into each other. On and on, until but a single colossal core of fire remained below us, formed by all the cluster's crashing suns, and that already, as the domed ships among us turned off their screening force, was beginning to expand outward, to swell out into a vast nebula of flaming gas. A mighty nebula there where the great cluster had been. A giant nebula that held within its fires all that had been the countless invading serpent-hordes who had swept upon us from-and who had been annihilated at the last by others from-outside the universe.