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Title: The comet-drivers
Author: Edmond Hamilton
Release date: June 17, 2024 [eBook #73855]
Language: English
Original publication: Indianapolis, IN: Popular Fiction Publishing Company, 1930
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COMET-DRIVERS ***
The COMET-DRIVERS
By EDMOND HAMILTON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Weird Tales February 1930.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Passing Rigel on our left, sir," reported the Canopan pilot standing
in the control room beside me.
I nodded. "We'll sight the Patrol's cruisers soon, then," I told him.
"I ordered them to mass beyond Rigel, just outside the galaxy's edge."
Together we strained our eyes into the impenetrable blackness of space
that lay before us. To the left, in that blackness, there burned the
great white sun of Rigel, like a brilliant ball of diamond fire, while
to our right and behind us there flamed at a greater distance red
Betelgeuse, and blue-white Vega, and Castor's twin golden suns, all the
galaxy's gathered suns stretching in a great mass there at our backs.
Even then, though, our cruiser was flashing out over the edge of the
galaxy's great disk-like swarm of stars, and as white Rigel dropped
behind us to the left there lay before us only the vast, uncharted
deeps of outer space.
Gazing forward into those black depths our eyes could make out, faint
and inconceivably far, the few little patches of misty light that we
knew were remote galaxies of suns like the one behind us, unthinkably
distant universes like our own. In the blackness before us, too,
there shone a single great point of crimson light, burning through
the blackness of the outer void like a great red eye. It was toward
this crimson point that I and the great-headed, bodiless Canopan pilot
beside me were gazing, somberly and silently, as our cruiser hummed on.
Then as he shifted his gaze there came from him a low exclamation, and
I turned to see that a great swarm of gleaming points had appeared in
the blackness close before us, resolving as we flashed on toward them
into a far-flung, motionless swarm of long, gleaming cruisers like our
own.
Swiftly our cruiser rushed into that hanging swarm of ships, which made
way quickly before us as there flashed from our bows the signal that
marked my cruiser as that of the Chief of the Interstellar Patrol.
Then as we too slowed and hung motionless at the head of the swarm
I saw three cruisers among them flashing toward us, slanting up and
hovering just beneath our craft. There came the sharp rattle of metal
as their space-gangways rose up and connected with our cruiser, and
then the clang of our space-doors opening. A moment more and the door
of the control room was snapped suddenly aside and three strange and
dissimilar figures stepped inside, coming swiftly to attention and
saluting me.
"Gor Han! Jurt Tul! Najus Nar!" I greeted them. "You've massed a
thousand of the Patrol's cruisers here as I ordered?"
Gor Han bowed in the affirmative. A great Betelgeusan, his big
fur-covered shape was typical of the races of that big sun's cold
world: a huge barrel-like torso supported by four thick stocky limbs,
with four similar upper arms; his dark eyes and other features being
set directly into the upper part of that furry torso, which was
headless. Jurt Tul, beside him, was as strange a figure, patently of
the amphibious peoples of Aldebaran's watery worlds, his great green
bulk of shapeless body and powerful flipper-limbs almost hiding the
small bulbous head with its round and lidless eyes. And Najus Nar, who
completed the strange trio, was as dissimilar from them as from myself.
One of the powerful insect-men of Procyon, his flat, upright body, as
tall almost as my own, was dark and hard and shiny in back and of soft
white flesh in front, with a half-dozen pairs of short limbs branching
from it from bottom to top, and with a blank, faceless head from the
sides of which projected the short, flexible stalks that held in their
ends his four keen eyes. Strange enough were these three Sub-Chiefs of
the great Patrol, yet to me these three lieutenants of mine were so
familiar, in appearance, that as they faced me now their strange and
dissimilar forms made no impression on my mind.
"Your order was urgent, sir," Gor Han was saying, "that we mass a
thousand of the Patrol's cruisers here outside the galaxy's edge, and
await your coming."
"Urgent, yes," I repeated somberly, my eyes turning from them to the
great point of crimson light that shone in the black depths beyond;
"urgent because it is out from the galaxy's edge that we are going with
these cruisers, toward that point of red light there in the void that
has puzzled all the galaxy since its appearance days ago--out toward
that point of crimson light which our astronomers now have discovered
to be a gigantic comet that is racing at speed incredible straight
toward our galaxy from the depths of outer space!"
The three gazed at me, stunned, silent, and in that moment the only
sound in the control room was the low humming of the generators
beneath, which sustained our ship in space. Then, gazing out again into
the black depths ahead toward that blood-like point, I was speaking on.
"Comets there are in our galaxy, as you know, comets that revolve
in irregular orbits about various of our stars, and which have been
familiar to us always. A comet, as you know, consists of the coma or
head, the nucleus, and the tail. The coma is simply a great globe of
electrical energy, with a hollow space at its center. The nucleus is
all the comet's solid matter, a mass of meteoric and other material
hanging in the hollow at the coma's center. The great coma blows from
its own electrical energy, and is driven through space by the release
of some of that energy backward, through the vast tail, which is
simply released energy from the coma. It is the great coma that makes
a comet deadly to approach, since any matter that enters its terrific
sea of electrical energy is converted instantly into electrical energy
likewise, changed from matter-vibrations to electrical-vibrations,
annihilated. Our interstellar navigators have for that reason always
avoided the comets of our galaxy, while never has it been dreamed that
a comet might exist in empty space outside our galaxy.
"Now, however, our astronomers have found that this crimson spot of
light that has appeared in the outer void and has puzzled us for days
is in reality a giant crimson comet of size and speed unthinkable,
which is racing straight toward our galaxy and will reach it within
a few more weeks. _And when it does reach it, it means the galaxy's
doom!_ For this gigantic comet, greater by far than any of the galaxy's
greatest suns, will crash through the galaxy's swarm of stars like a
meteor through a swarm of fireflies, annihilating those in its path by
absorbing them and their worlds into the terrific electrical energy of
its mighty coma; disrupting all the finely balanced celestial mechanism
of our universe and sucking its whirling stars into its deadly
self as it smashes on; engulfing our suns and worlds in electrical
annihilation, and then racing on into the void, leaving behind it but
the drifting fragments of our wrecked and riven universe!
"Onward toward our universe this mighty comet is thundering, and but
one chance remains for us to turn it aside. The center of this comet,
of any comet, is the nucleus at the heart of its coma, which is the
only solid matter in it. If we could penetrate through the coma to
the great hollow inside it, could turn upon that nucleus the powerful
force-beams used by our Patrol cruisers to sweep up meteor-swarms, we
could possibly push it aside enough to change its course, to send it
past our galaxy's edge instead of through it. But that must be done
soon! Our astronomers have calculated that within twelve more days the
comet will have reached a point so near the galaxy that it will be
too late for anything ever to turn it aside. When the Council of Suns
informed me of this I flashed word immediately for you three Sub-Chiefs
to mass swiftly a thousand of the Patrol's cruisers here outside the
galaxy's edge. And with these thousand ships we are starting at once
toward the comet!
"Behind us the Patrol will be massing another five thousand cruisers to
send out after us, but these can hardly reach the comet before it is
too late. It is on us, and on our thousand cruisers, that the galaxy's
fate now hangs. If we can reach the great oncoming comet, can penetrate
through its deadly coma to the solid nucleus at its center, can deflect
that nucleus with our force-beams before the twelfth day ends, we will
have turned the great comet aside, will have saved the galaxy itself
from death. If we can not, the galaxy perishes and we perish with it.
For we of the Interstellar Patrol, who have defended and guarded the
ways of that galaxy for thousands upon tens of thousands of years, go
out to the oncoming comet now not to return unless we can turn that
comet aside and save our universe from doom!"
Again in the control room was silence when I had finished, a silence
that seemed intensified, as the three strange Sub-Chiefs before me held
my eyes. Then, without speaking, they calmly saluted once more, eyes
alight. Impulsively I reached hands out toward them, grasped their own.
Then they had turned, were striding swiftly out of the control room and
through the passages beyond down to the space-doors, and through the
closed space-gangways to their own three cruisers. As our space-doors
clanged shut once more, the gangways of those cruisers folded down upon
them, and then the three craft had smoothly moved back to take up a
position just behind my own.
I turned to the round opening of the speech-instrument beside me,
spoke a brief order into it, and in answer to that order the thousand
cruisers behind us smoothly and quickly massed into space-squadron
formation, a long slender wedge with my own cruiser at the apex and
those of the three Sub-Chiefs just behind me. Another brief order and
the Canopan pilot beside me was opening the controls, our cruiser
and the great triangle of massed cruisers behind us moving smoothly
forward toward the crimson-gleaming point in the blackness ahead, our
generators throbbing louder and louder as we slipped forward at swiftly
mounting speed. We were on our way toward the great comet, and our
struggle for the life of our universe had begun!
* * * * *
The voice of Gor Han came clearly from the speech-instrument as I
stepped into the control room, days later. "Comet dead ahead, sir," he
announced.
But my own eyes were already on the scene ahead. "Yes," I told him,
"another hour will bring us to the coma's edge."
For before us now, bulking crimson and mighty and monstrous in the
heavens ahead, glowed the giant comet toward which for the last nine
days our thousand ships had been flashing. On and on we had rushed
toward it at unnumbered light-speeds, through the vast ether-currents
that raged here in space outside the galaxy, past regions of strange
and deadly force which we but glimpsed and which we gave a wide berth,
on into the endless outer void until our galaxy had shrunk to a small
swarm of blinking light-points in the darkness behind us. Almost,
in those days, we had forgotten the existence of that galaxy, so
centered was our attention upon the sinister crimson glory of the comet
ahead. Through those days it had largened swiftly to our eyes, from a
light-point to a small red disk, and then to a larger disk, and finally
to the gigantic circle of crimson-glowing light that loomed before us
now, and toward which I and the three Sub-Chiefs in the cruisers just
behind my own now gazed.
Tremendous as it was, the great comet's light was not dazzling to our
eyes, being a deep crimson, a dusky, lurid red, and gazing forward I
could make out its general features. The spherical coma was what lay
full before us, a gigantic ball of crimson-glowing electrical energy
that I knew, as in all comets, was hollow, holding in the space inside
it the solid matter of the nucleus. Behind it, too, I could glimpse the
vast faint-glowing tail streaming outward behind the onrushing coma.
The light of that tail, I knew, was but faint electrical energy shot
back from the terrific coma and propelling that coma forward through
space like a great rocket streaming fire behind it. The small comets
of our own galaxy, I knew, moved in fixed though irregular orbits
about our stars, and thus would often move about a star or sun in the
opposite direction to that in which their tail was pushing them, simply
because even the impetus of the tail could not make them leave their
fixed orbits. This giant comet of outer space, though, I knew, moved
in no orbit whatever through the empty immensities of the outer void,
and so would always race through space in a direction opposite to that
of its tail, the energy of the mighty coma shot forth in the tail like
the powder of a great rocket, propelling it irresistibly forward with
terrific momentum and force.
The glowing coma seemed countless millions of miles across, the still
vaster tail behind appearing to extend limitlessly backward into the
void. Gazing toward it, with something of awe, I was silent for a time,
then turned to the speech-instrument. "We'll slant our ships up over
the coma," I ordered, "and reconnoiter it for an opening."
Our massed cruisers shot steeply upward at the order, but as they did
so the voice of Jurt Tul came doubtfully from the opening before me.
"You think we can find an opening through which we can penetrate inside
the coma?" he asked.
"We'll have to," I told him. "We've only a few score hours left to get
inside and bring our force-beams to bear on the nucleus."
The Aldebaranian's voice came slowly in answer. "That coma," he said;
"it seems impossible that we can ever get inside it----"
There was silence as I gazed ahead toward the great comet, whose coma
was now indeed a terrific spectacle. An immense lurid sea of crimson
light, it seemed to fill all the universe, shifting slowly downward and
beneath us as our thousand cruisers hummed up at a steep slant over it.
We were racing toward it at a full million miles above its level, the
rim of the huge sphere of crimson light creeping across the black void
beneath us as comet and cruisers rushed closer to each other. Gazing
down toward the great coma, its lurid crimson light drenching all in
the control room, I heard startled exclamations beneath as even the
imperturbable members of my cruiser's cosmopolitan crew were awed by
the comet's magnitude and terror. Then, when the titanic crimson sphere
of the coma seemed squarely beneath our rushing ships, I uttered a word
into the instrument before me, and immediately our cruiser and the
thousand behind it had halted, had turned squarely about, and then at
reduced speed were racing along at the same speed as the comet, hanging
above it and accompanying it on its mad rush through the void toward
our galaxy.
Below us now lay the giant red-glowing globe of the coma, racing on
toward the far swarm of light-points that was our galaxy. And now,
gazing intently down into its far-flung glowing mass, I strained my
eyes for sight of some opening, some crevice in that mighty body of
glowing electrical energy that would permit us to penetrate to the
space inside it. Yet no such opening could be seen, no tiniest break
in the coma's lurid sphere. A single, unbroken and gigantic globe of
crimson luminescence, it hung beneath us, as we rushed through the
void, the vast fan-tail of faintest crimson light streaming out behind.
Through all our days of tense flight outward toward the comet I had
hoped against hope that in its coma would be some break or opening,
however small, that would permit us to penetrate inside, but now my
last hope, and the galaxy's last hope, was shattered by the glowing,
unbroken mass of this gigantic comet's coma. With sinking heart I gazed
down toward it as our triangle of ships sped on above it.
Gor Han's deep voice sounded from the instrument before me. "There
seems no opening in the coma at all, Khel Ken," he said. "And it
is instant annihilation for anything to venture into that coma's
electrical energy!"
"We'll have to drop lower and cruise about the coma's surface," I told
the Betelgeusan. "We _must_ get inside, somehow!"
With the words our cruiser began to sink smoothly downward, still
holding its forward flight above the comet, the massed ships behind
following steadily in our course. Down--down--by thousands of miles
a moment we sank, down until the giant coma beneath seemed the only
thing in all the universe, glowing from horizon to horizon like an
awful aurora of crimson death. An inconceivably colossal sea of lurid
electrical energy, a giant deadly sphere of glowing force which it were
annihilation for anything to touch, it stretched beneath us, broadening
still as we came closer toward it. Down--down----
A cry from Najus Nar sounded beside me. "Those cubes!" the insect-man
was shouting. "Racing ahead of the comet there!"
Swiftly I gazed down toward the foremost rim of the great, onrushing
coma, and saw what he had seen. Racing along a few thousand miles in
front of the comet, separated from each other by great spaces, there
sped score upon score of mighty metal cubes, glinting in the coma's
lurid light! Distant as they were, I could glimpse them clearly through
our telescopic windows, extending in a great chain or line around the
comet's head, and rushing before it through the deeps of space. And
there were openings in the sides of these speeding cubes, transparent
openings from which gushed pure white light! For they were ships!
Colossal cube-ships flashing on with the great comet on its thundering
rush toward our universe!
"Cube-ships!" It was Gor Han's shout that echoed my thought.
"Cube-ships!" Najus Nar too was crying. "Scouting before the comet!"
"And that means that these cube-ships are from the comet's heart!" I
cried excitedly; "from its----"
My exclamation had been cut short by simultaneous sharp cries from Gor
Han and Jurt Tul.
"The cubes have seen us!" they shouted. "They're coming up toward us!"
For there, far below us, the great chain of mighty cube-ships had
suddenly condensed, shortened, and they had all, a hundred or more in
number, massed swiftly together as though in answer to some sudden
alarm and were driving up toward us! At velocity incredible they shot
up toward us, while we gazed stunned; then as they flashed nearer there
flashed up from the foremost of them a long, slender shaft of crimson
light like that of the comet below, a terrific bolt of electrical
energy like that of the coma beneath, which struck one of our cruisers
squarely and instantly annihilated it. And as we gazed stupefied toward
it in that dazing moment, from the upleaping cubes beneath score upon
score of other crimson deadly bolts were stabbing up toward us!
2
"Battle formation!"
Even as the deadly crimson bolts had shot up from the cubes toward us
I had yelled the order into the instrument before me, and it was all
that saved us from disaster in that moment, since in the split-second
before the glowing bolts could reach us our cruisers had shifted
their formation suddenly, only a score of them being struck by those
glowing shafts. In that moment our cruisers had shifted into three long
parallel lines, and then, as the massed cubes beneath flashed ever
upward toward us, their glowing bolts blasting our cruisers, I had
shouted another order into the speech-instrument above the great din
beneath.
"The force-beams!" I cried. "Turn them on these cube-ships--push them
down into the coma!"
There came a deep shout from Gor Han at the order, and from Jurt Tul's
ship there issued through my instrument the amphibian's cool laugh.
The next instant there were shooting downward from all our cruisers
the great force-beams, broad beams, not of light but of darkness, of
utter blackness and absence of light, of great force that was invisible
itself but whose terrific power drove even the light-vibrations from
its path and so made the force-beams seem beams of utter blackness.
Down toward the uprushing cube-ships the black force-beams stabbed,
and as they smote among those cubes those that were struck by them
were driven suddenly downward with inconceivable power. Down, down,
struggling vainly against the irresistible force-beams that pushed
them, down, down until in a moment more those struck had been driven
into the crimson sphere of the mighty coma beneath, vanishing in its
immense lurid sea and there meeting annihilation instantly in spurts of
leaping light!
Thus a full score of the hundred cube-ships below had been forced
down to death in the comet in a single moment, but the rest were
still leaping toward us and before we could loose more of the deadly
force-beams they were just beneath us, among us, their crimson bolts
blasting lightning-like about them, leaping from cube to cruiser. High
above the titanic thundering comet, like flies above a sun, cubes and
cruisers whirled and struck and ran, with crimson bolts and black
force-beams stabbing thick through the void about us. I heard the
shouts of Gor Han and Jurt Tul and Najus Nar from the instrument before
me, screamed my orders into its opening as my own cruiser soared
through the wild mêlée with black beams whirling. I glimpsed one of the
cubes rocketing toward us, looming in an instant to immense size, a
colossal metal cube thousands of feet square, through the transparent
sections of which I could glimpse for a split-second the white-lit
interior, a mass of intricate mechanisms among which clung the beings
who manned it, black, shapeless masses that I but half glimpsed in that
mad moment. Then from the cube's great side a glowing red bolt shot
toward us, but a moment too late, since by then our cruiser had shot
upward and our black force-beam had smote down upon the cube-ship to
drive it into the glowing sea of death below!
About us, too, all our cruisers were speeding upward, in answer to my
orders, and before the cubes could check our maneuver we were over
them, all our dark force-beams smiting from above. Struck by those
beams, all but a scant half-dozen of the remaining cubes drove down
to doom in the coma's fiery sea, before they could rise to our level
to resume the battle. The half-dozen left seemed to hover motionless
a moment, then turned and sped away from us, back over the coma's
crimson-glowing sphere toward the great tail of the comet, streaming
out behind!
"We've beaten them!" Gor Han was bellowing. "They're trying to get
away----"
"After them!" I yelled into the speech-instrument. "They're trying to
get back inside the coma--they must have some way of getting inside!"
But my order had been unnecessary, for even as the half-dozen great
cubes flashed away, our cruisers, still some eight hundred in number,
had turned and were racing after them like unleashed hounds after
their prey. Downward and backward we raced after them, low across
the glowing surface of the great comet, over the deadly coma to where
the faint, vast tail issued from it. Ahead we could see the six
cubes fleeing onward, at a speed equal to our own, and the sight of
them caused us to open to the last notch the power of our throbbing
generators for that wild pursuit. Within moments, at that tremendous
speed, there came into view ahead the rear rim of the coma's colossal
glowing sphere, with the fainter glow that marked the currents of the
great tail streaming back from the rim into the void of space.
Swift as were the great cubes ahead, though, our great cruisers of the
Interstellar Patrol, speediest of all the galaxy's ships, were proving
now to be swifter, since slowly, steadily, we had begun to overhaul
those fleeing shapes. I heard Gor Han's deep voice, excited as always
in battle, from the speech-instruments, heard Jurt Tul's calm comments
as we drove nearer the flying cubes, heard Najus Nar's eager cries.
The cubes were passing out now from over the great coma, on over the
vast tail, to my puzzlement. I had thought they were striving to gain
the interior of the comet, but instead they were racing away from it,
while with every moment we were drawing nearer to them. Then, just when
it seemed that another moment's flight would bring us upon them, they
halted abruptly in space, hovering above the faint, vast-streaming
tail, and then plunged straight down into the mighty currents of the
tail, and were moving back, _inside_ that tail, toward the great coma
behind us!
"The tail!" cried Najus Nar. "They're going up the tail itself and into
the coma's heart!"
But I too had seen and had understood all in that moment, had
understood what I had not dreamed before, that the only opening through
the great coma to the hollow at its heart lay at the coma's rear, and
could be reached only by struggling up to it through the awful currents
of the tail! These mighty cubes, I saw, had been constructed in that
shape especially to resist and endure those terrible, back-sweeping
ether-currents set up by the comet's rush through the void,
terrific currents glowing with the electrical energy shot backward
and dissipated in driving the comet on. The cubes thus specially
constructed could brave those colossal currents where weaker craft
would be battered to fragments. All this I understood and weighed, in
that tense moment, and then had made decision and was shouting back
into the instrument before me.
"Down with our ships, too, then!" I cried. "_We're going up the tail
after them!_"
I heard an exclamation from Gor Han, an answering shout from Najus
Nar, and then my cruiser and all the cruisers behind us were dipping
steeply downward, plunging into the vast and faint-glowing tail! The
next moment was one of blind, utter confusion, for as we plunged into
the terrific currents our cruisers were whirled up and backward as
though by gigantic hands, thrown helplessly like leaves in a terrific
wind, cruiser smashing against cruiser and destroying each other there
by dozens in that wild moment. Then as the pilot beside me clung to
the controls, bringing its bows around to face those mighty currents,
heading toward the coma, our ship steadied, while those about it
steadied likewise. We had lost half a hundred ships in that first
terrific plunge, but neither my own nor those of the three Sub-Chiefs
had been injured, and now we were moving slowly up the great currents
of the tail toward the coma. The tail about us was to the eyes but a
great region of faint light, but far ahead of us there glowed like
a crimson wall of light across the heavens the mighty coma, and
against it we could make out the dark square shapes of the cube-ships
we pursued, likewise fighting their way toward the coma through those
terrific currents.
* * * * *
I think now that the moments which followed, as we struggled in pursuit
of those cubes, were almost the most terrible I ever experienced,
moments in which it seemed impossible that our ships could breast such
awful currents and live. About us the currents roared deafeningly,
thrilling through every portion of our ships, sweeping against us with
titanic power. On and on we struggled, veering to take advantage of
weaker currents, blundering into great maelstroms, swaying, plunging,
fighting on, with the coma's glowing wall looming ever closer ahead.
I heard Gor Han's anxious comments from the instrument before me,
glimpsed cruisers here and there behind my own collapsing and sweeping
backward, knew that not for long could we fight against those currents
and live.
The coma was very near, now, a giant wall of crimson light across the
heavens, and now I made out a dark circle within that glowing wall, a
circular opening rapidly largening to our eyes and toward which the
flying cubes ahead were struggling.
"The opening!" Gor Han was shouting, his voice coming to me even above
the awful din of the currents about us.
"Straight toward it after those cubes!" I cried. "Our ships can't stand
this much longer!"
Now ahead I could see the cube-ships we pursued struggling toward
that opening slower and slower, fighting the currents which were most
powerful here where they issued from the mighty coma ahead. A moment
more, though, and they had reached it, and vanished inside, while we
in turn were fighting through the titanic sweep of those currents
toward it. On--on--the currents that raged against us had become
awful in strength, seeming to clutch at us with supreme power at this
last moment. The opening loomed larger ahead, now, a dark circular
passageway remaining miraculously open and unchanged through that
electrical sea whose deadly crimson mass formed its walls. On--on--it
seemed that never could we reach it, so terribly did the currents sweep
about us. Yard by yard, foot by foot, we crept forward toward it, were
on its brink, seemed to hesitate there for an instant before being
swept backward and away, and then with a supreme last effort of our
throbbing generators we crept forward out of the grip of those gigantic
currents and into the open passageway!
Now all about us there raged the glowing electrical sea of the colossal
coma, into the deadly mass of which the passage led, a straight passage
which I knew could only be artificially made and maintained. Far ahead
in that light-walled passage we could glimpse the dark shapes of the
cubes, fleeing still before us, and now with humming generators our
cruisers leapt forward, through that tunnel of the deadly coma! Above,
below, on each side, there raged the coma's electrical sea, which it
were annihilation to touch, and the circular passage down which we fled
was hardly wide enough to admit three of our ships abreast, yet down
it at reckless speed we sped, all thought leaving us now save the wild
excitement of the pursuit.
Crimson light from the hell of glowing death that raged all about
us beat blood-like upon us as we drove on, yet the cries of Gor Han
and Najus Nar and even the cool Jurt Tul mingled with my own from
the speech-instrument, as we shot forward in pursuit of the fleeing
cubes. Never, surely, was pursuit stranger than that one, the galaxy's
hundreds of cruisers, manned by every dissimilar shape to be found
upon its myriad worlds, leaping forward in the narrow opening that
led through a comet's deadly mass into its unglimpsed heart, after
the strange cube-craft that fled on before us. A single slip of the
controls for a fraction of an inch was enough to send any cruiser into
the incandescent walls to death, and indeed I glimpsed cruisers among
those that followed me blundering into those walls in our wild flight
onward and vanishing in wild spurts of light!
Yet on and on we leapt, and shouted now as we saw the cubes ahead
shooting out from the passageway into open space beyond. A moment more
and we were on their tracks, were flashing out too from the encircling
crimson walls of glowing death, that vanished suddenly from about
us as we entered into a vast region of open space, the immense open
space that lay at the giant comet's heart! Far, far away from us there
stretched the walls of the gigantic coma that encompassed this open
space, above and below, enclosing all that space within their deadly
electrical sea. This, though, we had expected and it was not this that
held our attention in that stunning moment. It was the comet's nucleus,
hanging at the center of that space. For that nucleus was a mass of
smoothly revolving worlds!
Worlds! Worlds there at the comet's heart, worlds that were disk-shaped
instead of spherical, a dozen or more of which revolved in a great
ring about a single world that was larger than any of the others, and
that hung motionless! Over those revolving worlds, down toward that
central disk-world the cube-ships ahead of us were fleeing, and as we
shot down after them I saw that it and the rim of other disks, though
not illuminated by the dusky crimson glow of the encompassing comet,
were bathed in light, pure white light that seemed to emanate from
themselves! And as we rushed down toward the surface of that central
world I glimpsed upon it smooth dark ways and streets, on each side
of which were what seemed great, smooth-sided shallow pits; glimpsed
multitudes of dark, shapeless figures that moved to and fro along
those streets and ways, tending great mechanisms set up in masses
here and there along them; glimpsed a single great circular plaza or
smooth-floored clearing set amid those streets and pits and massed
mechanisms, at the center of which loomed a great, truncated dark
pyramid upon whose flat summit rested some big disk-shaped mechanism.
Then in that same flashing glimpse I saw that which drove all else from
my mind, saw from the surface of all this mighty world a tremendous
swarm of great cube-ships that was driving up toward the ships we
pursued, and toward ourselves!
"Cube-ships!" Gor Han was crying. "Cube-ships in thousands, and they're
attacking us!"
"Back!" I cried. "Back up and outward! We have no chance against these
thousands!"
But before our cruisers could turn, before we could halt and slant back
upward, the thousands of leaping cubes from beneath were upon us! Then
about us for a wild moment was conflict indescribable, colossal cubes
rushing by thousands upon our hundreds of gleaming cruisers, crimson
electrical bolts and black force-beams whirling and stabbing in wild
destruction. Cubes thronged thick about us as our cruiser leapt upward,
and then the thrumming of the force-beams of our ship sounded as they
drove paths of instant devastation through the ruck of battle about us.
From the speech-instrument there came above the din of battle a wild
cry from Gor Han, and I saw that a crimson bolt had grazed past his
cruiser's stern, warping its whole side with its terrific power and
sending his craft swirling helplessly down to the world below! I cried
out at that sight, then saw Najus Nar's craft slant downward even as
my own struggled wildly with the cubes about it, saw the insect-man's
cruiser drive right and left with force-beams, as other cubes from
beneath rushed up toward it. Then as it shot downward among them to
reach Gor Han's falling ship it had crashed glancingly along the side
of one of the uprushing cubes, and with its prow a twisted wreck of
metal was whirling down also!
"Gor Han! Najus Nar!" I shouted, as I saw them fall; then a deadly
bolt of blinding crimson fire flashed past our cruiser's walls,
missing us only by inches; I yelled crazily as the cube above that had
loosed it was driven smashingly into the battle whirl about us by our
swift-leaping force-beam. But about us now our cruisers were swiftly
vanishing, as the hordes of cube-ships rushed upon them! They were
stabbing out with black beams to the bitter end, driving cubes down
to death with those beams, yet they were fast disappearing beneath
the withering hail of deadly crimson electrical bolts. But a score of
cruisers remained beside me, now but a dozen, as the crimson bolts
still flashed thick, Jurt Tul's ship fighting side by side with my own.
Then, as but a scant five or six cruisers remained, the target of all
the blasting bolts from the massed cubes about us, there penetrated
through the deafening roar of battle from the speech-instrument Jurt
Tul's great voice.
"Back out of the comet!" he yelled. "It's our only chance, Khel Ken--to
get outside until the rest of the Patrol's cruisers arrive!"
I saw, even through my mad blood-lust at that moment, that he was right
and that our only chance of further action lay in winning clear of the
comet. "Back, then!" I cried.
With the words our half-dozen cruisers zoomed upward and outward at
such tremendous velocity that the deadly bolts from the thousands of
cubes beneath fell short of us in our wild upward rush. Up--up--upward
from that great central world we shot, and outward. The cube-ships
beneath, taken by surprize for the moment, then massed also and leapt
up after us. And now, a scant six cruisers remaining of all the
thousands that had been our force a few minutes before, we raced out
from that central world, toward the darker circle in the distant coma's
wall that was the one passage to outside space. Out over the ring of
revolving disk-worlds we shot, out toward that opening, out----
But what was that? That swarm of tiny, square shapes, of gleaming
little cube-shapes, which even at that distance we could see had darted
suddenly from one side across the dark circle of the single opening?
Close-massed in a compact swarm, they had shot out from the side to
halt _across_ that opening, hanging motionless there. Cube-ships,
hundreds in number, that had flashed toward that opening from one side,
to hang motionless there across it, while behind us there raced after
us in deadly pursuit the other cube-ship thousands! Cube-ships that
hung motionless, ready, across that round opening through the great
coma, and at sight of which I cried aloud once more.
"They've cut us off--they're ahead of us!" I cried. "_They've barred
the one way to outside space and we're trapped here at the comet's
heart!_"
3
The moment that followed, as our ships slowed and hung motionless, with
doom ahead and doom behind, was one in which the death that we had
dared a score of times since reaching the comet loomed full before us.
The cube-ships that barred the way ahead, the thousands racing toward
us from behind--these were like death's great jaws closing upon us,
and for an instant I felt myself surrendering to utter despair. But
then, as my eyes dropped downward, toward the ring of outer smaller
disk-worlds over which we had been flashing and above which we now
hung, a flicker of hope shot through me and I turned swiftly to the
speech-instrument.
"Down to those worlds below!" I cried. "There's a chance that we can
hide on one of them until we can get out of the comet!"
Instantly, spurred to greater swiftness by our desperate situation,
our half-dozen cruisers were slanting sharply down toward one of those
revolving disk-worlds. The surface of that world leapt up with terrific
speed toward us as we shot recklessly downward, and I sighted cities
of pits and streets and mechanisms like that of the central world upon
it, cities though that did not cover all its surface as in the central
world, but were scattered about it, the rest of the disk-world's
surface being a tumbled mass of mighty mountains and chasmed valleys,
all of barren dark rock. It was down toward one of these tremendous
chasms, near the disk-world's outer edge, that we were heading, every
feature of that world's surface lying plain beneath us in the strange
white light that bathed all these revolving worlds. Downward into that
awful chasm our cruisers shot, and as they did so I glimpsed, high
above, a swarm of tiny dark cube-shapes that had halted their pursuit
of us, were circling about and dropping lower as though to discover our
whereabouts!
Our lives depended on finding some place of hiding in this
tremendous-walled chasm, I knew, and as we arrowed down into its
depths, white-lit by the same strange illumination, I gazed swiftly
about for some place of concealment. A moment the search seemed
hopeless, there being nothing but the chasm's narrow floor of barren
rock, its towering jagged rock sides, and then as we shot along its
length I sighted a great crack or crevice in one of them, a long,
crack-like opening that was large enough to admit our cruisers, and
behind which could be glimpsed the dark depths of some great cavernous
hollow in the rock.
"Through that crack!" I ordered swiftly, saw Jurt Tul's cruiser move
quickly toward it, scraping against the crack's jagged edges as it
pushed through into the dark cavern behind. Another of our cruisers
followed, and then the rest, one by one, until my own was scraping
inside, just as I saw the cube-ships high above dropping toward us,
splitting into divisions of a dozen ships each which were slanting down
over all the surface of this world in search of us, one of them heading
straight toward the great chasm!
As it slanted down toward us I gazed about me, saw that our six
cruisers were hanging in a dark, cavernous abyss that seemed to extend
far down into the depths of this disk-world. A rocky shelf just inside
the crack-opening, though, seemed large enough for us to rest our
ships upon; so instantly we brought them to rest there, cutting off
the generators whose humming might betray us. Then, as our space-doors
opened with a slight inward hiss from the higher-pressure air of the
disk's atmosphere, I stepped quickly out, found Jurt Tul and the other
cruiser captains beside me, and then we had all suddenly crouched down
inside the great crack's edge as a score of the great cube-ships shot
down into the white-lit chasm outside.
Peering out from the cavern's dark depths we saw those cubes hanging
there, then moving slowly along the chasm's length as though in
search of us. Down its length they disappeared and we breathed
easier for a moment; then they reappeared, coming to rest on the
chasm's floor directly beneath the opening in which we crouched,
scarce a half-hundred feet below us. Tensely we watched, saw that
doors were opening in those cubes' sides, creatures emerging, the
comet-creatures of these strange worlds. And at sight of those
creatures even our tense situation could not suppress our gasps. For
they were--liquid-creatures! Creatures whose bodies were liquid instead
of solid, creatures that were each but a pool of thick black liquid,
flowing viscously about, in each of which pools floated two round,
white blank disks, great white pupilless eyes.
We saw them flowing forth from out their cubes, saw some whose viscous
bodies held what seemed tools or weapons, saw the floating eyes turned
this way and that about the chasm, as though in search of us. Then a
score of the strange creatures did an incomprehensible thing: they
flowed together into a single liquid mass, a great black pool in which
floated all their eyes, their liquid bodies mingling together! A moment
they remained thus, then had separated, each from the others, and were
returning to their cubes.
"Conversing!" whispered Jurt Tul beside me. "It's their method of
conversing, of exchanging thoughts--to mingle their liquid bodies one
with another!"
I knew the amphibian was right, and shuddered involuntarily at the
thing we had seen. The cubes' doors had closed now, and the cubes were
lifting upward from the chasm's floor. One, more suspicious apparently
than the rest, hovered a moment outside the crack within which we
crouched, and we shrank back, suddenly tense, but after a moment's
inspection it too had driven up after the others, which passed from
sight high above, searching slowly across the disk-world's surface in a
strange formation as though following some discussed plan. We breathed
easier, then, standing erect, and I turned quickly to Jurt Tul.
"Our only chance is to get out of the comet and wait for the five
thousand Patrol cruisers that were to come after us," I told him. "But
we can't leave the comet with Gor Han and Najus Nar prisoned in it!"
The great amphibian shook his head. "We could venture back to the
comet-city on the central world to attempt to find them," he said, "but
in this brilliant white light we'd be seen and destroyed at once."
I was silent, for I knew that it was so, and broodingly I considered
that light, whose white illumination filled all the great chasm
outside, beating faintly even into the cavern, yet seeming to have no
visible source whatever. And then, even as I gazed upon it, that light
died! It seemed to gray, to darken, and then had vanished altogether,
within a moment, while at the same moment there beat faintly through
the air from far away a great clanging note like that of a giant gong.
The chasm outside, the world and worlds about us, lay now in dusk,
their only illumination the lurid, dark crimson light of the comet's
glowing coma, a red disk that gave to the barren rocky world about us
an inconceivably weird appearance.
"That gong!" Jurt Tul was saying. "You heard it? It sounded when the
light died--it means that these comet-creatures maintain and regulate
their own day and night!"
"That white light," I said; "you mean that it's made by them, turned
off for their night?"
He nodded quickly. "It must be. They can use the coma's great
electrical energy to produce that light at will, just as they use that
energy for their crimson bolts. They must turn it off and on at regular
intervals, to produce their day and night, their activity-periods and
rest-periods."
"But then we can venture back to the comet-city--back to the central
world for Gor Han and Najus Nar!" I exclaimed, and he nodded.
"Yes, but we'd best wait longer, since now the cube-ships' search will
be going on, even in this dusk, and we'd have small chance of escaping
them."
* * * * *
For all my impatience I saw the wisdom of Jurt Tul's suggestion and
so composed myself to a longer period of waiting. So hour followed
hour while we crouched there in the great crack in the chasm's wall.
Far above we could see the crimson coma, against which there came and
went now and then divisions of cube-ships, still searching, searching
for the fugitives who had escaped them. My thoughts turned to Gor
Han and to Najus Nar, prisoned in the comet-city, and then to our
own predicament. But hours remained now in which the comet might be
turned aside, and unless we could escape from it, could meet the five
thousand cruisers that were racing toward it from the galaxy and lead
them inside, no power in all space and time could turn the comet aside
from the galaxy. And I could not, would not, attempt to escape from the
comet without having first learned the fate, at least, of Gor Han and
Najus Nar.
At last I stood upright, turned to Jurt Tul. "The cube-ships above seem
to have slackened their search," I told him, "and now's the time for
our venture. We've had hours now of this dusk, and the light of their
day may be turned on at any time."
He nodded, then pointed out that his cruiser had been damaged somewhat
in the battle over the central world. So that it might not delay us we
transferred his crew from it to the others, Jurt Tul entering my own
cruiser with me, while the damaged one we left there on the cavern's
shelf. Then, after we had closed our space-doors, our cruisers moved
gently out of the narrow opening, rising swiftly up over the disk-world
from the chasm's depths. That disk-world's surface lay beneath us, now,
illumined by the coma's far crimson glow alone, a lurid luminescence
that picked out streaks and veins of metal here and there in the jagged
rock. It was plain, indeed, that these worlds were meteoric in nature,
and had been formed and set spinning in this orderly fashion by the
comet-creatures themselves.
For the time, though, we heeded not these things, intent on the scene
ahead as our five cruisers shot silently through the lurid dusk toward
the central world. Far away, now and then, against the coma's baleful
glow, we caught sight of cube-ships moving still restlessly about
in search of us, and once a party of these seemed to take up our
course, to follow us. These, though, veered away in the dusk behind
us, and then in a moment more we had passed above that ring of outer
disk-worlds, and Jurt Tul and I, gazing forward from the control room,
could make out the great, motionless mass of the central world beneath
us, the world that was our goal. No light gleamed upon its darkened
surface, lying in a weird picture there in the coma's crimson dusk. As
we shot down toward it I saw vaguely in that dusk the great, massed
machines here and there, the smooth streets, the enigmatic pits about
them, and then the great clearing at the flat world's center.
"That clearing!" I whispered to Jurt Tul. "It was near it that Gor
Han's and Najus Nar's ships fell--we'll land near it."
Our cruisers now were arrowing smoothly down toward one of the
broader streets some distance from the clearing, since we could see
now that on all the world below there moved only an occasional dark
liquid-creature, the throngs we had seen before having unaccountably
disappeared. Here and there above it moved a cube-ship, but none of
these glimpsed us through the dusk, and in a moment more our cruisers
had landed gently upon one of the smooth streets. There Jurt Tul and
I swiftly stepped forth, for we had decided that we two alone could
explore the comet-city more silently than a larger party. At once the
cruisers swept back to wait for us in the dusk above, ready to make
an attempt at escape from the comet should we be discovered. Then the
amphibian and I moved swiftly along that silent street toward the great
central plaza.
On each side of us loomed great massed machines at which we merely
glanced as we hurried on. As we passed one of the pits that had puzzled
me, though, I stepped to its edge, gazed down, then shrank back in
horror! For in that shallow, smooth-walled pit there lay what seemed
a great pool of thick black liquid unguessably deep, a pool formed
by the liquid bodies of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the liquid
comet-creatures that had poured into it! I could glimpse the white eyes
floating in it, here and there, but there was no other sign of life
or movement in the mass, and as I saw that and thought of the rows
upon rows of other similar pits that extended across the comet-city, I
understood, and turned swiftly to Jurt Tul.
"Sleeping!" I exclaimed. "In their night, their rest-period, they must
all pour into these pits together--mingling their liquid bodies!"
Swiftly we shrank back from the great pit, moved on toward the
clearing. Massed machines, grim and gleaming and towering, loomed
all about us, half seen in the crimson dusk, and we passed scores of
the great, liquid-filled pits in which slept the comet-creatures,
but there was no sign of our two friends. Had they been destroyed?
Dread filled me, dread intensified because I realized that soon the
comet-creatures would be ending their night, and turning on their white
light of day, discovering us there on their world. Then, abruptly, Jurt
Tul jerked me back from my forward stride, crouching silently with me
upon the street, behind a mass of great mechanisms. For out of the
darkness to our right had come the sound of something moving, something
approaching us! Silently, tensely, we crouched there, and saw a dark
shape moving stealthily down one of the branching streets toward us. It
had turned from us, toward the great clearing ahead, when unexpectedly,
as we crouched, my arm had brushed against the great machine beside
us and touched something that moved beneath the touch, with a loud
metallic clicking. Instantly that dark shape ahead had turned, and then
was leaping straight toward us!
Before we could rise to meet it the rush of it had borne us downward,
and as it did so I realized with a wild thrill that it was _not_
a liquid-creature but a great and warm and fur-covered being,
many-limbed, that had attacked us! Even as that fact penetrated into my
brain our struggle had abruptly ceased, and we were staggering erect,
Jurt Tul and I grasping the other.
"Gor Han!" I exclaimed. "It's you!"
The great Betelgeusan's fur-covered body and strange features were
clearly visible to us now as he grasped our own hands, his eyes wide.
"Khel Ken! Jurt Tul!" he whispered. "I thought you destroyed in the
battle!"
"We hid--escaped," I explained to him swiftly. "But you, Gor Han--how
have you escaped?--and where's Najus Nar?"
He was silent a moment, then suddenly dragged us down into the deeper
shadow of the great machines beside us. There, with the lurid light of
the coma on his strange features, he spoke swiftly.
"Najus Nar is--living," he said, "but I will tell you what came upon
us. You saw our ships fall in the battle over the city here, crashing
down into it. At once these liquid comet-creatures were upon us,
most of our crews having been killed in the crash, and but a few
were left; but these being injured, too, they annihilated them with
crimson bolts before we realized it, leaving but Najus Nar and myself,
whom they wished, apparently, to question. Us they secured by metal
bonds to one of the great machines, then came to us with little metal
models, made of what seemed plastic gleaming metal, which could change
instantaneously through a myriad different forms at their operation,
and which they used for a rough communication with us. And through
these and the things they explained to us, we learned, Najus Nar and I,
something of the purpose and the past of these comet-creatures.
"Eons they had dwelt upon the central worlds of this giant comet that
roamed the outer void, shaping those worlds to their will as it flashed
on. They had used the coma's electrical energy for their own weapons,
and had used it to produce light-vibrations, a white light which they
turned on and off for their day and night. The coma's energy, indeed,
was the source of all their world's activities, but as their giant
comet plunged on through space, that energy, ever shot backward in the
tail that drove the comet on, was dissipated faster and faster, the
coma waning and dying as all comets wane and die in time. But one thing
could save them: to absorb into the coma vast quantities of matter,
which would be converted instantly into electrical energy to replenish
the coma. Not far from the great comet at that time loomed a vast
universe of suns, and if the comet were to crash through the universe
its suns and worlds would replenish their waning coma and save their
comet from death. They needed but to change the comet's course, to send
it toward the universe instead of passing it, and to do this they set
up a great comet-control.
"This comet-control was set on the top of a truncated pyramid in a
clearing at the central world's center. It was a great horizontal
disk, set parallel to their disk-world, with a pointer that could be
moved at will around the disk-dial. The position of the pointer, by
means of great projectors to which it was connected, controlled the
position of the comet's tail. If the pointer was at the dial's rear
the tail would be shot forth from the great coma's rear also, driving
it forward through space. If they turned the pointer to the left the
tail would shoot from the coma's left, driving the comet to the right.
They could thus, by means of the comet-control and the great projectors
which controlled the tail's position, drive the comet in any direction
at will. The only thing they could not do with it was to reverse the
comet-control, to shoot out a new tail opposite to the old one, since
the momentum of the old one and the opposite momentum or pressure of
the new one would crush and annihilate the coma and its worlds between
their great pressures. They could drive the comet to right or left at
will, though, which was all that they needed, since now they drove it
toward the universe of suns near them.
"Onward the giant comet drove to that universe, and soon crashed
through it, its suns and worlds being sucked into the gigantic coma and
annihilated there, converted instantly into electrical energy which
restored the waning coma's glory. So onward through space with renewed
power it flashed, through the great void between the galaxies, until
ages later when its coma was again waning they drove it toward another
universe, crashed through it likewise. And so through the eons, as ever
the comet's glory, the coma's power, has waned, they have driven it
through another universe, destroying that universe to restore it. On
through the limitless void of outer space they have driven it, a cosmic
vampire looting the life of universes to restore its own! And now, when
the comet's glory has again waned, they have turned it toward our own
galaxy, to destroy it as they have done countless others. And within
less than a scant half-dozen hours now the comet will have thundered so
close to our galaxy that no power in existence can turn it aside!
"All this we heard from the comet-creatures' communication with us,
and then they proposed that we cast in our lot with them, forgetting
our doomed universe, and help them build great cruisers and force-beam
apparatus like those with which we had fought them. I refused, of
course, not wishing to live under any conditions after our galaxy's
death, but to my horror Najus Nar accepted the proposal! He joined
them, not listening to my frantic words, and went away with them,
leaving me in despair. Then when the gong sounded across their worlds
that marked the end of the white light and the beginning of this night,
I began to work frantically with the metal bonds that held me to the
great machine, twisting and untwisting them until at last, but minutes
ago, I managed to break them. They had counted on the bonds holding
me, and had left no guard over me, so at once I started off toward
the central clearing, toward the great comet-control, for a desperate
last attempt at turning the comet aside with it. I heard you crouching
there, thought you comet-creatures and sprang at you, and the rest you
know."
* * * * *
When Gor Han's deep whisper had ceased we were silent a moment, and
surely never did stranger trio crouch in stranger place than we three,
earth-man and amphibian Aldebaranian and great fur-clad Betelgeusan,
there in the crimson dusk of the comet-city, all about us the pits that
held its countless liquid-creatures and above us the glowing red coma
which encompassed this world and was driving on toward our galaxy's
doom. At last I broke the silence.
"Najus Nar with the comet-creatures!" I whispered. "It's impossible! In
all its record there have been no traitors in the Interstellar Patrol!"
Gor Han looked steadily, compassionately, at me. "It is so, Khel Ken,"
he said. "I would not believe it had I not seen it myself."
"Najus Nar!" I repeated, again, then gathered myself. "There's but
one thing to do," I said swiftly, "and that's for us three to make
the attempt you planned, Gor Han, to get to the comet-control in the
clearing and turn it, then destroy it before they can turn it back!"
We rose, paused. "There are comet-guards at the pyramid's base and
summit, I know," said Gor Han, "but if we can overcome them before this
night-period ends we'll succeed!"
Swiftly we moved forward, now, down the street through the dusk toward
the great clearing. Mighty machines looming in the red dusk on each
side of us, dark pits yawning between them in which the comet-hordes
lay silent, glowing crimson coma that swung above--these made an
inconceivably weird scene about us through which we three, a weird and
dissimilar enough trio in that lurid dusk, moved rapidly on. Once we
saw a few of the liquid-creatures flowing across one of the streets
ahead, shrank back until they had disappeared, then moved swiftly on.
One or two cube-ships slid by above, too, but these did not spy us, and
in a few minutes more we had emerged from the mass of machines and pits
into the great flat-floored circular plaza at the city's center, the
truncated pyramid rising vaguely from it in the crimson dusk.
"The guards!" whispered Gor Han. "There at the pyramid's base!"
I gazed, saw that a great notched stair or flight of narrow steps
ran up the pyramid's side, and that at its foot were some four dark
liquid-shapes, lying motionless, but with weapons of some sort,
bolt-containers I did not doubt, held in the grasp of their viscous
fluid bodies. A moment we hesitated, then crept out across the clearing
toward them. They seemed not aware of our approach, and still nearer we
crept stealthily, approaching them from a side, until just when we were
within yards, within feet of them, one seemed to flow swiftly toward us
for an instant, then back, at the same time training his deadly weapon
upon us! Before he could loose the crashing bolts from it, though, we
had sprung upon them!
The combat that followed at the pyramid's base was the most horrible,
I think, that ever I engaged in. I had grasped at the body of one of
the things but instantly felt the viscous liquid body withdraw from
my grasp, flow away from me, while I struggled in vain for some hold
upon it. Then I glimpsed Gor Han with his four great arms gripping
one of the viscous things and hurling it against the pyramid's side
before it could evade his grasp, shattering it into liquid black
splashes there. The thing I struggled with had gripped me in turn,
now, and was like fluid steel in the strength with which it held me.
I felt a powerful viscous arm tightening about my neck, while others
pinioned my arms, felt that grasp tightening, strangling me, and then
it was abruptly torn from me as Gor Han lifted and flung it likewise!
I rose, staggering, to see that of the four comet-creatures only black
splashes here and there about us remained, Gor Han and Jurt Tul having
annihilated them with their mighty limbs.
[Illustration: "The combat that followed was the most horrible I had
ever engaged in."]
"Up to the pyramid's summit!" I choked, stumbling toward the stair's
base. "We've a chance to win yet!"
The others were rushing toward the stair with me, and then suddenly,
as we set foot upon it, we stopped short. For in the air about us,
sounding out across all the central world and the worlds about it, had
clanged the note of a mighty gong! I heard Gor Han and Jurt Tul cry out
at that sound, but in the next instant brilliant white light had sprung
into being about us, the light of the comet-creatures' day, suddenly
turned on, bathing all things in their world in its revealing glare!
And as we staggered there almost blinded by that brilliance, from the
streets about us comet-creatures were flowing into the great clearing,
liquid black comet-creatures in countless hordes from the pits of the
mighty city. Even as they poured into the clearing they saw us, those
on the pyramid's summit had also glimpsed us, and then from above and
from all about the comet-creatures in countless thousands were rushing
upon us!
4
There was a wild cry from Gor Han. "They've come out--it's the end of
their night! And the end for us!"
The end for us! It seemed so in that instant, the great hordes of
comet-creatures flowing in toward us from all the clearing's sides,
from the pyramid's summit down toward us, the suddenly aroused
cube-ships darting across the city toward us from far away. Then, even
in that split-second of terror, I saw rushing toward us among those
liquid-hordes a figure at sight of which I forgot even the doom that
was upon us, an erect, many-limbed, familiar insect-figure as tall
almost as myself, at sight of which I uttered a great cry.
"Najus Nar!" My great shout reached him even across the wild confusion
and din of that moment, and I saw him gaze full toward us, his
strange face expressionless, then rush on toward us without sign of
recognition, one with the hordes of comet-creatures about him! I heard
a gasp of unbelief as Jurt Tul beside me saw also, heard the crazy
yell of great Gor Han as with eyes crimson he stepped forward to throw
himself against those onrushing comet-creatures, then was conscious
that great dark shapes had swooped down from behind us, hovering
momentarily beside us. They were our five cruisers!
Their space-doors were already wide, and in the next instant, just
before the comet-creatures were upon us, we had tumbled inside, were
rocketing upward above the city pursued by scores of brilliant crimson
bolts, two of which found their marks and sent two of our ships into
flaring death. The cruiser into which we three had rushed, though, and
the other two remaining ones, were racing up now above the white-lit
central world, with the countless cubes rising swiftly after us,
forming in a great crescent-formation behind us as they flashed after
us across the ringed worlds toward the coma's wall!
"They're going to drive us straight into the coma itself!" cried Gor
Han above the din of our generators as we flung madly on.
I saw in the same moment that it was so, that the great crescent
of thousands of cube-ships that had risen to destroy us were not
overhauling us, behind, but were driving us onward without chance of
escape sidewise or downward, this time. The glowing wall loomed before
us, and the single circular opening in that wall was guarded still by
hundreds of other cube-ships, hanging in a solid mass across it. We
could not escape through that opening, even had we desired escape, nor
could we evade the relentless pursuit behind us, and inevitably within
seconds more we would be driven into instant annihilation! Driven to
our own deaths by the cubes behind us! This I saw, and in that instant
of cold despair could have plunged on into that annihilating death, but
then wild anger surged up in me and I whirled to Gor Han and Jurt Tul
and the pilot beside them.
"Drive straight toward the opening!" I shouted. "Straight into the
cube-ships there! If this is the end we'll take some of them, at least,
with us!"
A fierce cry from the Betelgeusan, a reckless laugh from the amphibian,
answered me as our three ships shot forward in that moment like things
of light toward the cube-ships massed across the opening. Nearer we
flashed toward them, nearer toward the hundreds of crimson bolts
which in another moment would blast us, nearer--but look! look! Those
hundreds of waiting ships had turned suddenly from us, had turned about
and disregarding us were loosing their crimson bolts into the great
passage-opening through the coma behind them, were falling back toward
us from that opening, with red bolts blasting toward it! And then out
of that opening after them came the things at which they fired, mass
upon mass of long, shining shapes, of great, long _cruisers_, that
burst forth from the opening in hundreds, in thousands, loosing upon
the battling cubes a myriad of black shafts of the force-beams which
in a moment more had driven them down and back in shattered masses of
wreckage!
"Cruisers! Cruisers of the Interstellar Patrol!"
We were all shouting madly, then. Cruisers, the five thousand cruisers
that had been sent out after our own thousand and that now, at the
last, had found their way inside the comet in time to save us! They
were shooting toward our own, massing about us, and then as from our
bows flashed the signal that was mine as Chief of the Patrol, they were
massing swiftly behind us, battle formation again in long parallel
lines, with our own ship at their head!
"Back to the central world!" I cried, my eyes upon the time-dial set
before me. "We've minutes left yet to get to that comet-control!"
Cruisers massed together, we were leaping back, now, back toward
the spinning worlds, and toward the great crescent-formation of
cube-ships that faced us now. Before those thousands of cube-ships
had grasped what had happened, before they could turn, could change
their formation, our compact mass had driven into them. Then cruiser
thousands and cube-ship thousands were spinning and striking and
mingling together, smiting with black force-beams and crimson bolts
in titanic battle inside the tremendous electrical coma, whirling and
stabbing in awful combat, the comet-creatures for their comet and we
for our universe! Comet and galaxy had come to grips at last as those
two huge fleets caught and struck at each other!
Cubes and cruisers swirled and ran about us as our own cruiser
struggled through the wild ruck of the battle, our own black beams
stabbing to smash back cubes before and beside us, while through
the speech-instruments before me I cried orders to my mighty fleet,
directing the masses of cruisers that leapt and struck and soared at
the great square cubes about us. All space outside seemed a single
giant mass of struggling cubes and cruisers, cut across by blasting
crimson bolt and ebon beam, yet ever we were forcing the cube-ships
back, back over their ring of revolving disk-worlds, back over their
mighty central world, and then down toward it as they fought fiercely
against our black beams which drove great paths of destruction through
them!
The surface of that world was looming clearer beneath us, bathed in
white revealing light, as the giant battle swung lower down toward it.
I glimpsed the great circular clearing, the pyramid with the mechanism
and comet-guards on its summit, knew by the dial before me that but
minutes still remained to turn aside with it the colossal on-thundering
comet. Lower we swung toward the clearing, and as we did so the cubes
beneath stiffened against us, their uprushing hail of deadly red bolts
stabbing like an upward-falling rain of crimson death! But still more
deadly were the black beams that drove down through them from our
ships, and they were giving a little before us, sinking lower still,
when suddenly from the surface of the world below there rose up among
them another cube, one vastly greater than any of the others, one that
moved ponderously up to the center of the cube-ship fleet and then
glowed suddenly with a brilliant light. And as it did so the thousands
of cube-ships beneath us suddenly vanished! Disappeared from sight as
though they had never been, leaving below us only the spot of brilliant
light that marked the greater cube!
"That great cube!" Jurt Tul was crying. "It's a vibration-projector
of some kind, one whose vibrations make invisible all the cube-ships
around it and leave our ships and all else visible! And they're
attacking now!"
For even at that moment, as we stared dumfounded toward the place where
the cube-ship fleet had vanished, there had come from beneath and
beside us hundreds upon hundreds of crimson bolts, bolts that flashed
seemingly out of empty space annihilating scores, hundreds, of our
bewildered ships, bolts from the cube-ships which we could not see,
but which were circling about us now loosing their terrific shafts of
death upon us! A battle to the death between two mighty fleets, one
invisible, the other a plain target! Out in all directions our black
beams were wildly whirling, but we could loose them only by chance,
while our own ships, a perfect target to the invisible cubes about us,
were flaring in annihilation in ever-increasing numbers!
"That great projector-cube!" I shouted to Gor Han. "Our only chance is
to get to it--destroy it!"
I pointed down toward the spot of brilliant light beneath, which marked
the position of the great cube that was projecting the vibrations
that made our enemies invisible. But even as I did so a half hundred
cruisers of our fleet had massed together, shooting downward in a
great wedge, through a withering hail of crimson bolts, down through
invisible cubes through which they crashed, down until an instant later
the score remaining of them had crashed squarely into the spot of
brilliant light below, meeting annihilation with it in that collision.
But the light vanished as they crashed, leaving but wreckage of cube
and cruisers, and at the same moment the mass of cube-ships beneath us
had suddenly flashed into full view once more!
* * * * *
Our great fleet was gathering itself now for a last final rush downward
through those opposing cube-ships toward the comet-control. I could
hear the wild victorious shouts of Gor Han and Jurt Tul and the crew
beneath loud in my ears, could see the pyramid's summit, the great
control, close beneath, as I turned to the speech-instrument to shout
the word that would send our fleet thundering down. But before ever my
lips opened I had stiffened, stood motionless. For from the time-dial
before me had come the low, metallic note of the passing hour, marking
the end of the last moment in which the comet could have been turned
aside! Marking the end for our universe, sounding in my stunned ears
like a titanic knell of doom across the infinite for our galaxy!
Nothing now in all the universe could turn the giant comet aside from
that galaxy enough to save it! Motionless there, Gor Han and Jurt
Tul and I heard echoing away that muted note that had struck for the
galaxy's doom!
"Lost!" Gor Han was saying it, strangely, slowly, uncomprehendingly.
"We've lost!"
Lost! The galaxy--our suns--our myriad peopled worlds--all lost,
all doomed to annihilation by the gigantic comet about us that was
thundering on now irrevocably! It seemed, in that instant, that all
things in existence, the cruisers about us, the cube-ships beneath us,
the comet-creature hordes on the surface of the white-lit world below,
had paused for one moment breathless, a moment that marked a galaxy's
doom. Then suddenly Gor Han was pointing downward, eyes starting,
pointing to the comet-creature hordes on that world below, which were
suddenly rushing crazily toward the pyramid beneath us, the cube-ships
also racing wildly down toward the pyramid's summit! For on that summit
from the stair on the pyramid's side a dark, erect figure had suddenly
rushed, and before the comet-guards had glimpsed him had rushed to the
great disk-dial and pointer of the comet-control! An erect, many-limbed
dark figure who had seized the pointer in his grasp!
"_Najus Nar!_" Gor Han's great scream held within it all our renewed
faith, our sudden comprehension.
For the insect-man had grasped the pointer, the pointer that controlled
the position of the giant comet's tail, and had swung it half
around the disk from the dial's rear to its front! As he did so he
straightened, arms up-flung toward us in a last great gesture toward
the distant opening through the coma, and then the comet-guards were
upon him, the blasting crimson bolts from the darting cubes above had
reached him, annihilating the pyramid's summit, while in all the city
beneath us liquid comet-creatures and great cubes were rushing crazily
toward that pyramid, rushing too late toward the control which they had
themselves built for their comet and which now had destroyed them!
_For Najus Nar had reversed the comet-control!_
Even as the bolts had blasted the pyramid's top our cruisers had shot
with the velocity of thousands of light-speeds out from the central
world and those about it, out across the comet's heart toward the
circular opening through the coma, through that passage of crimson
death at awful speed and out into space behind the comet as the passage
closed behind us, as the tail behind the comet waned swiftly! And as
our cruisers shot up above the mighty comet, we saw that it had halted
in space, the awful momentum with which the old tail at the rear had
driven it on balanced, opposed, by the new tail shot from its front,
toward the galaxy, when Najus Nar had reversed the control! Caught
between the two cosmic pressures, between the momentum and terrific
speed with which the old tail drove it forward and the power with
which the new tail drove it backward, the mighty coma beneath us was
bulging, was spreading! Bulging outward above and below, to right
and to left, its giant crimson-glowing coma dilating and breaking up
between the terrific pressures from front and rear! Changing from a
great sphere to a gigantic shapeless crimson mass of electrical energy,
bulging out in all directions, great flashes of leaping light inside
it marking the end of the great comet-worlds caught and annihilated
inside its tortured mass! Out--out--it swelled, our cruisers hanging
far above it, watching it grow swiftly greater, _thinner_, until in
moments more where the colossal crimson comet had been was nothing but
a vast, far-flung cloud of faint electrical radiance, the concentrated
electrical energy that had been the giant comet and its worlds
dispersed out into that huge, faint-shining cloud!
The cosmic vampire that had threatened the life of our universe was
gone forever! The comet-drivers had driven their comet and its worlds,
at last, to death!
5
Sweeping in toward the galaxy's gathered suns, days later, our great
cruiser fleet slowed, halted, hung motionless outside the galaxy's edge
once more. Before us flamed great white Rigel, as it had flamed--how
long it seemed before!--when Gor Han and Jurt Tul and Najus Nar had
gathered in the control room of my cruiser, at the start of our mad
journey toward the comet. Now that comet was but a vast, faint cloud
of radiance far in the void behind us. And now, too, it was Gor Han
and Jurt Tul that stood before me, in the cruiser's silent control room.
The cruisers about us had massed into two great divisions, since here
at the galaxy's edge Gor Han and Jurt Tul were to leave me, taking
up once more their duties in the ceaseless watch of the Interstellar
Patrol, with for me my work as Chief in the headquarters at Canopus.
The frantic joy that would be shaking the galaxy's peoples to see the
shadow of doom thus lifted from them, the frantic gratitude that we
might claim--in these we had no interest now, wanting only to take up
once more the great Patrol's endless work. So now the cruisers of my
two friends hung waiting beneath my own, as we paused in silence at the
moment of parting.
Gor Han's deep voice broke the silence at last. "The end of the
journey, for us," he said. "And for Najus Nar----?"
"For Najus Nar, too," I said. "He dared and died, for the
galaxy--pretending to join the comet-creatures that he might thwart
their plans at the last--and he would have wished no other end."
Jurt Tul nodded slowly. "Najus Nar would have wished it," he said. "Yet
strange it seems, that we four of the Patrol are three, at last."
Silent we stood again, at that, and then Gor Han and Jurt Tul reached
forth, Betelgeusan and Aldebaranian and earth-man clasping hands in
a moment's grip. Then they had turned, had saluted sharply, and were
striding down through the cruiser toward their own ships, which with a
clang of metal moved away from beneath my own. Gor Han's to the right,
Jurt Tul's to the left, they moved, heading each the massed cruisers
there, and then those cruisers were moving away, to right and left
along the galaxy's edge, passing and vanishing. My single cruiser hung
alone in the void, the pilot beside me with hands on its controls,
but for a moment I paused still, gazing back through the blackness of
the great void toward a far, faint-shining cloud that glimmered in the
blackness. A long moment I gazed toward it, then turned. And then our
cruiser too was moving, in over the galaxy's edge, in toward great
Canopus through its gathered, flaming suns.
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