Still grasping the controls, though, I held the ship to a course aslant from our previous one, while my two companions tensed with me over them, gazing ahead, while from beneath again came wild cries of alarm as those of our crew, who had already run the gantlet of the enemies' death-beams and of the great heat-region, saw the new peril that encompassed us. There came, too, from somewhere in the ship, a great thump and clang of metal as some one of our mechanisms there broke loose from its crumbling base, but still we flung onward through the void, rocking and twisting, and in a moment the terrible tenseness that gripped us lessened a little as we saw that the glowing of the walls about us, and of our own bodies, was beginning to wane, as we drew out of the zone of deadly force. A few more moments of onward flight and they had vanished altogether, and then I brought the ship back to its course, heading once more toward the misty light-patch of the Andromeda universe, while I drew a long breath of relief.
There was a silence of moments before Jhul Din, first of us, found his voice. 'Heat regions and radio-active force regions!' he exclaimed. 'If more of them lie between us and the Andromeda universe, what's our chance of getting there?'
Korus Kan shook his head. 'We'll get there,' he said, 'but we'll have to keep close watch every moment of our flight-there's no way of telling how thickly scattered these great vibration-regions may lie in space about us.'
A moment more and Jhul Din left us, passing down into the ship's body to ascertain what damage had been wrought by the great zone of radio-active force, though we knew that we had escaped from it before it could seriously damage the ship. And as I now relinquished the controls to Korus Kan, pausing with him a moment to look out again with some fearfulness into the black void through which we were racing, it was with a full realization, at last, of the tremendous perils and unguessed circumstances that might lie in the vast spaces through which we must yet flash. Yet as my eyes fell again on the misty-glowing circle of the Andromeda universe, and the sinister, dimly flickering mass of the dying universe of the serpent-people, to its right, I felt my determination steeling again within me.
It was the sight of those two far patches of light ahead, I think, that held us all to our purpose in the hours, the days, that followed. Long, strange days they were, when with no sun whatever near us we could measure time only by the great abysses of space through which our ship was steadily flashing, computing from those distances and from our unvarying velocity the passing of the hours. But with each day, with each hour, we were racing countless billions of miles nearer toward the Andromeda universe, and toward the goal of our tremendous journey. On and on we plunged, our prow turned ever toward that misty circle of light ahead, that was largening and brightening with each hour that we sped toward it.
Thrice, in those following days, we glimpsed great regions of heat and crimson light like that through which we first had plunged, and each time we were able to swerve away from them and detour around them in time, and so escaped a renewal of our first dread experience of them. More than once, too, our instruments gave us warning of zones of radio-active or electrical force near us, and these we gave even a wider berth than the heat-regions, for these we feared most of all, I think. Ether-currents and vast ether-maelstroms were about us, too, we knew, but the tremendous speed of our craft brought us flashing through those where a slower-moving ship would have perished.
As it was, one danger that had menaced us always in navigation inside the galaxy, the presence of meteors and meteor-swarms, was lacking in our flight. Yet I think that almost we would have welcomed their presence about us, for all their danger, if only for the knowledge that some other matter besides our ship moved and existed in the mighty void around us. It was our ship's isolation, the knowledge that all about it for countless billions upon billions of miles, thousands upon tens of thousands of light-years, there stretched only the awful regions of empty space, an ocean of lightless space in which the galaxies of flaring suns here and there were but tiny islands, that oppressed us most. Far behind lay our own galaxy, and far ahead the Andromeda universe; and between universe and universe, an infinitesimally tiny speck there in the mighty void, our ship raced on and on.
But as we added day after measured day to our flight, as we flashed nearer and nearer toward the Andromeda universe, it slowly began to change before us, to wax from a little patch of glowing light to a larger and brighter patch, and then to a great oval of light that flamed brilliant in the blackness of space before us, and finally to a vast disk-shaped mass of stars like our own universe. The disk mass lay in space with edge toward us, and seen thus, the light of its countless thronging stars was fused almost into a single waxing glow, but as we swept nearer and nearer that glow began to resolve itself into the light of the myriad massed suns of which it was composed. So brightly flamed those gathering suns in the heavens before us that only with an effort could we make out, far toward the right, the still faint glow of the dying universe of the serpent-people, as near to us almost as that of Andromeda, yet infinitely dim and dead in comparison with it.
Steadily we flashed on, day following day, until when a score of them had passed we computed ourselves as having traversed two-thirds of our journey, and could see that ever more swiftly the great universe of stars ahead was widening across the heavens. On that twentieth day I spent hours with Jhul Din in our regular inspection of the ship's mechanism, passing with him through the long room where our engineers, depleted in number by the death- beam that had sliced through our ship, tended carefully the mighty generators. Then the Spican and I passed out of the room, and were proceeding down the long corridor that led toward the pilot room when there came suddenly from it, ahead of us, a sharp cry.
We stopped short a moment, then raced down the corridor and burst up into the pilot room, where Korus Kan turned swiftly from the controls toward us.
'Ships are approaching from ahead.' he cried, pointing up toward the big space-chart.
We looked, and saw that even as he had said there moved upon that chart a half-hundred black dots, in close formation, creeping steadily downward across the blank chart to meet the upward-creeping dot that was our ship. In silent amazement we watched, as our craft raced on, and then saw that as we neared them the fifty ships ahead were slowly halting, and then beginning to move back toward the Andromeda universe in the same direction as ourselves. They were allowing us to slowly overtake them, obviously intending to race beside us at the same speed as ourselves, toward the Andromeda universe. And as they made that move Jhul Din uttered an exclamation.
'They must be ships from the Andromeda universe itself.' he cried. 'They've learned of our approach by space-charts of some kind-have come out to meet us.'
My heart leapt at the thought, for if it were so it would mean the first success of our mission across the void. Silently we watched, as our ship's single dot on the chart raced closer and closer toward the half-hundred dots above it, they moving now at a speed almost equal to our own. Within moments we would be able to glimpse them, we knew, and gazed tensely into the blackness of space ahead, toward the Andromeda universe's flaring suns, as our craft raced on. Moments were passing, tense moments of silence and watchfulness, and then far ahead we glimpsed in the void, hardly to be seen against the great glow of the Andromeda universe, a little mass of light- points that steadily were largening as we gradually overtook them.
A full fifty of them in sight, they were flashing on in a close formation, allowing us to overhaul them, changing from mere light-points into dark, vaguely glimpsed shapes as we drove nearer toward them. Then at last we had reached them, were driving in among them as they moved now at the same speed as ourselves, could see their shapes more clearly as long and oval, their front ends white-lit transparent-walled rooms like our own. Nearer we were flashing to those before us and about us, and then in those white-lit control rooms I glimpsed their occupants, slender, writhing pale shapes at sight of which I cried aloud.
'Serpent-ships!' I cried. 'Serpent-ships from the dying universe ahead! Those back in our galaxy from whom we escaped have warned them of our coming, by the means of etheric communication their records mentioned-they know our mission and they've come out to intercept us here in space.'
Even as I cried out, Korus Kan's hands flashed out to the controls, but he was an instant too late. For at that same moment the ships just before us had turned and circled in one swift movement, and were rushing straight back toward us. I had a flashing glimpse of their white-lit prows racing toward us through the intense darkness, and saw with photographic clearness the slender serpent-shapes in those brilliantly lit pilot rooms, and then the foremost ship loomed suddenly enormous as it flashed straight toward us. With a sharp cry Korus Kan drove the controls sidewise to swerve our ship, but before we could avoid the onrushing craft ahead it was upon us and with a terrific, thunderous shock had crashed straight into our own racing ship.
