Within the Nebula

V

For a single moment death stared us in the face, and we stood there stupefied with terror. As yet the guards approaching us seemed not to have glimpsed us, owing to the corridor's dim light, but with every moment they were drawing nearer and it was but a matter of seconds before we would be seen and slain. Then, before we had recovered from our stupefaction, Sar Than had jerked us sidewise toward one of the last shaft-cells in the floor that we had just passed.

"Down here!" he cried, pointing into its dark depths. "Down here until they pass!"

In a flash we saw that his idea was indeed our last chance, and at once lowered ourselves over the dark shaft's rim, hanging from its edge with hands gripped on that edge.

We had not been too soon; for a few seconds later there came the rustling sound of the guards passing above, gliding down the corridor past our place of concealment. As they glided by we hung in an agony of suspense, hoping against hope that they would not glimpse our hands on the pit's rim, or notice the absence of the creature left to guard us. There was a long, tense minute of waiting, and then they were past. We hung for a few moments longer, with aching muscles, then drew ourselves up to the corridor's floor once more and started down its length toward the square of white brilliance in the distance.

Down the dim-lit corridor we ran, past open doors in its walls through which we glimpsed great halls and branching passageways, all seeming for the moment deserted. A few moments later we had reached the corridor's end, and were peering out into the gigantic, white-lit space that lay beyond, a space alive and clamorous with the same multifarious activity as when we had come through it. To venture out into that great place of humming machines and thronging nebula-creatures was to court instant death, we knew, yet it must be crossed to gain the single shaft that led upward. Then, while we still hesitated, I uttered a whispered exclamation and pointed to something in the shadows beside us, something big and round that lay just inside the broad corridor's dusk, and that gleamed faintly in the dim light. In a moment we were beside it, and found it to be one of the great turtle-machines that swarmed across the floors of the vast caverns beyond us, though this one was unoccupied, its round door open to expose the hollow interior of the dome.

"There's our way out!" I cried. "There's room in it for the three of us!"

Within another moment we were inside it, crouching together in the cramped space of the interior and swinging shut the little door. I found that a narrow slit running around the dome allowed us to look forth, and that a little circle of switches grouped around a single large lever were evidently its controls. Swiftly I pressed these switches in a series of combinations, and then there came a welcome hum of power from beneath and we were gliding smoothly out of the shadowy corridor into the full glare of the thronging, white-lit cavern, my hand on the central lever guiding our progress.

Tensely we crouched in our humming vehicle as it moved smoothly across the cavern, between the rows of great machines, toward the corridor opening in the opposite wall. The thronging nebula-creatures about us paid us no attention whatever, taking us for but one of the scores of turtle-machines that were busy about us. Hearts beating high with our success we glided on toward the dark wall-opening that was our goal. A score of feet from it we suddenly held our breath as another of the turtle-machines collided suddenly with our own, but in a moment it had glided away and in another moment we were again in the shadows of a dim-lit corridor, gliding down its length toward the shaft that led upward.

We reached the corridor's end, sprang out of our machine and through the door into the well-like bottom of the shaft. At once the plant-man was clambering up the peg-ladder, followed by the Arcturian with myself last. Up, up we climbed, putting all our strength into the effort, for we knew that not many minutes remained for action. Then suddenly as I looked down I stopped and breathed an exclamation; for standing at the bottom of the shaft were two of the nebula-creatures, not more than a hundred feet below us-two white masses of flesh that were staring up toward us.

A moment we hung motionless on the pegs, while the two weird beings gazed up, and then we saw one of them glide back into the corridor, racing back to the great caverns to sound the alarm, we knew. The other gazed up at us once more and then, to our horror, began to climb swiftly up after us.

I think now that of all that befell us there in the nebula world the moments that followed were the most agonizing. Swinging ourselves up by sheer muscular power, from peg to peg, we clambered up that giddy ladder, through a darkness impossible of description. Somewhere in that darkness below me, I knew, the nebula-creature that pursued us was swinging up after me, and I knew that to such a creature the negotiation of this dizzy ladder was child's play. Yet, spurred on by deadly fear, I struggled upward with superhuman speed, a hundred feet, another hundred, until a hope flashed across my brain that the thing that pursued us might have given up that pursuit. Then above us I glimpsed a little dot of glowing light, knew it for the shaft's mouth far above. And at the same moment that I glimpsed it, I felt a tug on my ankles, a powerful arm fasten round my body, and knew that the pursuing creature had reached me.

I cried out involuntarily as I felt my feet twitched off the pegs on which they had rested, and dangled for a moment there by my hands while the creature below me tightened his grip on my feet and began to pull me steadily downward. All his force he must have put into that effort, and I felt my hands slipping on the peg which they held, knew that once I lost my hand-grip the creature below would release my feet also and send me hurtling down to death on the shaft's floor far below. In a deathly silence I hung there, striving against that deadly pull, and then felt one of my hands torn from its grip, felt the fingers of the other slipping on the peg they held, felt my will relaxing-

Then someone had suddenly swung down past me from above, and I glanced down to glimpse in the dim light from above Sar Than, swinging swiftly down past me and hanging by one of his powerful limbs while with the other three he grasped the creature below me. Instantly the latter's grip on my feet relaxed, there was an instant of swift scuffling below me, and then I glimpsed the shapeless body of the nebula-creature forced from its hold on the pegs, hurtling down into the darkness to strike the floor far below with a smacking thud. The next instant Sar Than was up to me and was pulling me up until I again clung safely to the pegs. Only the Arcturian, with his four strange limbs, could ever have successfully battled the nebula-creature thus on that giddy ladder of pegs.

But now we were again clambering up, calling on all our strength to bear us on, watching the little circle of dim light above broadening as we climbed up toward it. Below us, we knew, the alarm had been given, and within a few minutes now a horde of the nebula-creatures would be rushing up the shaft. And but minutes were left for us to act in, so that we put every effort into a mad burst of speed that within a few more minutes had brought us up to the shaft's mouth.

Jor Dahat, above us, was the first to reach its level, and I saw the plant-man raise his head and peer cautiously forth, then beckon us upward. Silently, stealthily, we climbed up, crept over the shaft's edge until we crouched on the smooth metal floor. The scene about us was the same as before, the vast, metal-walled pit, the massed machines around us, the great cylinder at the clearing's center from which arose the livid ray, the long shape of our battered cruiser lying beyond it. A half-dozen of the nebula-creatures were gathered near the great cylinder, and we saw their bodies twisting in their silent speech, but their strange eyes were not turned in our direction.

In a moment Jor Dahat crept silently to one side, where lay a mass of tools, and came back with three heavy, ax-like implements of metal in his grasp, long-handled and broad-bladed. Silently he handed one of these to each of us, and then without words we crawled silently toward the gathered nebula-creatures, on hands and knees. Inch by inch, foot by foot, we crept toward them. I looked up, once, saw the glowing fires of the nebula far above us, knew that within minutes those fires would be flying out through our universe in flaming destruction unless we could act. My grip tightened on my weapon as we crawled on through the shadowy dusk, and then suddenly one of the creatures before us had turned and was gazing straight toward us.

Before he could turn to his companions in warning, before he could do more than merely glimpse us, we had sprung to our feet and were leaping toward the creatures with upraised axes. The next moment we were upon them, our heavy weapons flashing right and left in swift destruction, and when we lowered them only masses of dead flesh lay at our feet. Wildly we looked about, but there seemed no other of the nebula-creatures on all the great pit's floor, nothing but the silent, automatic machines, and the great cylinder of the ray. Now we leapt toward that cylinder, then halted. A half-dozen pseudopod arms were reaching up from the shaft up which we had come, a half-dozen of the creatures pulling themselves up there. It was the pursuit from beneath!

Jor Dahat cried out, raced toward the shaft's mouth with the Arcturian. "Cut the cable, Ker Kal!" he shouted. "The cable that runs into the cylinder-Sar Than and I will hold them in the shaft!"

I saw the two of them reach the shaft's mouth just as a mass of the nebula-creatures were emerging from it, saw their two great axes flash down and send the shapeless beings hurtling down to death. Then I had leapt myself to the great, foot-thick cable of black metal that ran into the cylinder's side, carrying into it the power from all the machines about us which generated the mighty ray. I raised my ax, brought it down with all my force on the cable, but on the hard metal it made only a shallow cut. Again I swung it, and again, with all my force, while at the shaft's mouth I glimpsed the axes of my two friends flashing in the dim light like brands of lightning, falling in swift death upon the shapeless nebula-creatures as they sought to emerge from the shaft. I heard the puff of jets of the deadly blue smoke leaping upward, but knew that so long as they were held inside the shaft they could not reach the Arcturian and the plant-man with their annihilating jets.

Fiercely I swung my own ax down upon the black metal of the thick cable, in one swift blow after another, severing its twisted strands one after the other. The last minutes were speeding, I knew, and like some soulless automaton I wielded the great ax in blow after blow, scarcely conscious in that mad moment of anything but the thick length of metal below me. I was half through it, now, had cut through half its strands, and knew that another dozen of blows would sever it. And even as hope flamed up in my brain there was a cry from Jor Dahat, I saw a sudden resistless wave of the nebula-creatures pour up from the shaft and force my two companions back toward me, and then they were raising their deadly weapons to send annihilation upon us.

For a single moment the whole scene seemed as motionless as a set tableau. Then with a wild shout I whirled the great ax high above my head, swung it for an instant in a flashing circle, and then brought it down with the last mad remnant of my force upon the half-severed cable below, a powerful blow that clove through its twisted strands as a knife might cut through cords. There was a flash of light as the cable parted, and then the brilliance of the great cylinder's upper surface had snapped out, and the mighty ray that sprang from it had vanished!

The next instant there was utter silence, a thick, terrific silence in which we, and all the nebula-creatures that had crowded up onto the pit's floor, gazed up toward the mighty nebula's fires, far above us. Seconds, minutes, that awful silence reigned, and then I saw the weapons of the nebular-creatures before us dropping from their grasp, saw them rushing wildly about as though in mad, frenzied terror, heard a great cry from Jor Dahat, beside me.

"The nebula!" he cried hoarsely, pointing up toward the glowing fires above. "The nebula-collapsing!"

I looked up, dazedly, saw the vast fires moving now, slowly, majestically, gigantically, moving down toward us, toward the nebular world, the whole vast turning nebula collapsing into the great space at its center with the removal of the ray that had whirled it on, its mighty, crowding fires rushing down upon us. Then I had sunk to the floor, felt the arms of my two friends about me, dimly felt myself dragged across the floor through the crazily rushing hordes of nebula-creatures into our cruiser, felt it lifting up out of the great pit with the plant-man at the controls, as the fires above rushed down upon us.

Then there was a thunderous roaring of titanic fires about us, a vast, interminable rushing of colossal currents of flaming gas all around us as we plunged upward through the collapsing nebula. More and more dimly to my ears came that mighty roar of flame as consciousness began to leave me, but at last, through my darkening senses, I felt that it had ceased, that we were humming through space once more. With a last effort I staggered to the window with my two companions, gazed down dazedly toward the terrific ocean of boiling flame that stretched gigantically beneath us, saw that still its fires were drawing together, collapsing, contracting, condensing. Then suddenly up from the collapsing nebula there leapt a single mighty tongue of fire, as from some titanic conflagration, a vast rush of flame that towered up toward the stars, and then dwindled and sank and died.

It was the end forever of the world within the nebula.