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 these 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.'
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 insectman 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 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 cubeships 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!
II
