In the intervening days those crews, those thousands of gaseous Andromedans, had been the recipients of the galaxy's frantic gratitude at having lifted from it the shadow of doom that had hung upon it, in all that time when the serpent-creatures, in the Cancer cluster, had prepared to spread out in their great conquest. Sun had vied with sun, and world with world, to do the Andromedans honor, for they it was, as all in the galaxy knew, who had gathered the mighty fleet that had rushed across the void to our universe's aid. They it was who, with the galaxy's fleet, had smashed the serpent-armada in such a battle as had never been known before. And they it was, too, whose great sun-swinging ships had saved us at the last, had annihilated all the serpent-hordes and their cone of doom.
And if the galaxy had given to the Andromedans for their aid its highest honors, it had given no less to us and our followers who had dared cross the void to seek that aid; to me, who had led that wild expedition across the gulf and had led the great Andromedan fleet back to our galaxy and into the colossal battle of universes; to Jhul Din, who had saved us all, and with us the galaxy's chance of life, in the serpent universe; and to Korus Kan, who when captured with the sun-swinging craft by the attraction-ships had managed to escape them in the void far out from the Andromeda universe by replacing in an upward position some of the purple-force projectors of the sun-swinging ships, blasting the disk-ships that held them with the force of those projectors and racing back to find our great fleet gone, speeding across the void after us and flashing in to save us at the last moment. So great was the gratitude of our galaxy for what we had done that no reward had been offered, either to us or to the Andromedans. For what save our universe itself could reward those who had saved that universe?
Now, as the dozen Andromedan leaders came toward us there, the great Council behind us and the vast throngs about us silent, they paused. Strange, erect columns of misty green vapor, they poised there, contemplating us, I knew. Then Serk Haj had reached an arm toward them, bat-winged being of Deneb with his grasp returned by the misty arms of the gaseous beings before us, and then they had passed from him to Jhul Din, and from the big crustacean to Korus Kan, and from his gleaming metal figure to me. There was a strange tightness across my throat as I reached a hand out toward them, and they paused as they grasped it, paused as for the third and for the last time I gripped hands with these gaseous beings of an alien universe, whose great fleet I had led through the void from battle to mighty battle. Then they had turned, were gliding toward their ships.
And now we three turned toward our own long, cigar-like ship that waited beside us, for we were to pilot them out through our galaxy into outer space once more. Into our craft we stepped, up into its pilot room with Korus Kan at the controls once more, and then we were driving up from the great world beneath, with the five thousand Andromedan ships behind us, were slanting up and outward-out from that world, out from great Canopus, until it was dwindling and diminishing behind us, out through the galaxy's swarming suns and past the great nebula that had been the Cancer cluster, until we were driving out from the galaxy's edge into the great void once again.
Our ship and the ships about us slowed, halted. Before us lay the vast darkness of outer space, infinite in extent. Before us and to the right in that darkness, far ahead and hardly to be seen, was visible a dim little flicker of light, the flicker that was the serpent-universe, a dying universe almost as lifeless as the worlds within it were now. And to the left and ahead glowed the misty little patch of light that was the Andromeda universe. Even as our eyes caught it, the ships around us were moving toward that misty patch, outward into the gulf of space, passing from about us, their great shapes dwindling swiftly as they sped out from us, toward their universe. Standing there, shoulder to shoulder, we three watched them go, until at last they were but tiny points ahead, were wavering, were vanishing, were gone.
Yet still, though, we stood there unmoving, gazing out after them, with before us the silence and darkness of the eternal void, and behind us the galaxy's stars.
