upon the back of one of the great, flat Andromedan ships, that had flashed down under it and caught it upon itself, bearing us down to the ground and saving us from the crash and from death.
A moment more and we were stumbling out of the pilot room, down to the ground from the Andromedan ship on which we rested. As we reached it I saw that the other falling half of our ship had been saved in the same way by another Andromedan craft, lying close beside us on that craft with the members of our crew in it pouring out to join us. Another instant and they stood with us, a vast mass of the gliding, gaseous Andromedans that swarmed on this world's surface having collected about us, a strange, silent horde that I knew were contemplating us with their alien sense of sight. Quickly toward us, though, came the half-dozen Andromedans who had been with us in the ship and had escaped with us, leading us now through the throngs of gaseous figures about us toward some destination of their own.
As we moved along with them, though, our interest was not so much in our destination as in the stupendous and unparalleled scene about us. Far away to the distant horizons stretched the smooth surface of this great world, covered with an even growth of jet-black sod that gave it an extraordinarily park-like appearance, with here and there tall, spiked growths or plants of the same ebon black. That blackness, as I guessed, was due to the perpetual, fierce light of the great ring of suns that belted the firmament overhead, the circle of suns at whose center this mighty planet hung, and whose ceaseless light would naturally give to this world's vegetation a pigmentation of deepest black. The belt of giant suns above, the countless swarms of Andromedans about us, like gliding pillars of misty green gas, the ebon vegetation, the masses of mighty ships that rose and descended ceaselessly in the broad areas set aside for them-all these held us silent with the silence of awe, as with our guides we moved on.
It was none of these things, though, wonderful as they were, that intrigued me most of all about us-it was the total absence of buildings, of visible structures or habitations, on all the surface of this world. The smooth black sod, the countless Andromedan throngs, the departing and arriving ships-these were all that were visible about us, all except a great number of round, well-like shafts that opened in the ground everywhere about us. These shafts were some six feet across, and were placed always in pairs, or groups of two, and as I gave them more attention I saw, in a moment, that they held the answer to the absence of all buildings about us. For into them and out of them the gaseous Andromedans were moving in ceaseless streams, moving straight into one empty shaft and sinking smoothly downward out of sight, upheld by some force at the shaft's bottom beneath that nullified gravity just enough to make it possible for them to float gently down. From the other shaft of the pair, too, other Andromedans would be rising smoothly upward through the air, reaching the surface and gliding away, that other ascending shaft having at its bottom a constant force sufficient not only to nullify completely the pull of gravity but to give all in the shaft a slight upward thrust.
Into these shafts, as we moved past them, I glanced down, and saw that far beneath they opened into brilliant-lit rooms and halls, some of great size. I understood, then, how they had come to be used, how the Andromedans, their vast hordes cramped upon the surface of their worlds, had removed all buildings from the surface and had sunk them deep in the ground itself, subterranean buildings that could be entered or left by the ascending and descending shafts, and that gave them all the surface of their worlds free for their ships and to move about on. In and out of the great buildings sunken in the ground beneath us were moving constant streams of Andromedans, up and down the shafts; and now we saw that before us lay a pair of such shafts much greater in size than all others we had seen, and the center of a great rush of traffic of the gaseous beings about us. It was toward these greater shafts that our Andromedan companions were leading us, the figures before us giving way as we approached.
A moment more and we stood at the edge of the descending shaft, the Andromedans beside us motioning toward it and moving over its edge, sinking smoothly downward. Hesitatingly I followed, stepped from the edge into the empty air of the shaft; but the next moment my fear left me, for instead of plunging down a dead weight, I and my companions who had followed me were sinking downward as gently as though gripped and upheld by unseen hands. Down we floated, through the great shaft bright-lit by the belted suns above, down until we were sinking down out of the shaft itself into a vast, white-lit hall that stretched away for a great distance in all directions from us, and down from the center of whose ceiling, where the two great shafts opened from above, we were sinking.
Smoothly we sank downward from the great hall's ceiling to its floor, landing upon a great disk inset in that floor beneath the descending shaft and glowing with dark purple light, the glowing force that combated gravitation enough in the shaft above it to allow us to float gently down. For the moment, though, I paid not so much attention to it as to the strange, vast hall in which we now stood. Colossal in size and circular of shape, the mighty, white-lit room was as large or larger even than the great Council Hall of the Federated Suns, in our own universe, though it was far different in appearance. There were in it no ranks of seats, the smooth floor being divided by crossing black lines into thousands of squares of equal size, and in each of those squares there rested, motionless, one of the gaseous Andromedans, thousands upon thousands of them, like massed columns of thick green vapor, being grouped in the great room about us.
We stood ourselves on a section of the floor at the room's very center, raised a few feet above the rest of the floor, and except for the two purple-glowing disks beneath the ascension and descension shafts the only object upon this raised portion was a great globe of what seemed misty glass, exactly like the tiny one with which the Andromedans had first communicated with us, but of vastly greater size, being some dozen feet in diameter. Toward this, as we hesitated there at the center of that gigantic assemblage of strange, silent figures, there moved the leader of the Andromedans who had accompanied us. He grasped with his two gaseous arms the metal studs that projected out from the great globe's base, and at once the misty sphere glowed with inward light, while in it appeared the thousand Andromedan ships, flashing out into the void, rescuing us from the serpent-fleet, and bringing us back into their own universe, a swift succession of explanatory scenes.
This explanation complete, the Andromedan moved back from the great sphere and motioned me toward it. Slowly I stepped forward, sensing the gaze of the massed, silent thousands on me. I knew that it was the supreme moment of our mission, the moment for which we had battled our way through three universes, the chance to obtain from this great council of the Andromedans the help that might save our universe. I glanced back to the anxious faces of my friends, drew a long breath, and then grasped the two studs before me, concentrating all my thoughts on what I wished to express, as the big sphere above glowed with inward light again, the thrilling current from it rushing into my brain.
In the glowing globe now appeared our universe, a great galaxy of stars floating in space like their own. Swiftly, with shifting thoughts, I showed them its throngs of peopled worlds, the traffic that swept between its suns, the ordered life of its teeming, dissimilar races. Then as my thoughts shifted again they saw the first five thousand serpent-ships rushing in upon that galaxy, destroying all our fleet and settling upon the suns and worlds of the Cancer cluster, saw us fleeing inward and then turning to capture one of the serpent-ships by boarding it in mid-space. Then, briefly, the globe flashed forth the interior of our own great Council Hall, with our Council Chief exhibiting and explaining the records of the serpent-people which we had captured in their ship. In a swift flash I explained the meaning of those records, a flash that showed the serpent-people, masters of the suns and worlds of our own universe, sailing out with increased powers to attack the Andromeda universe, and as that flashing scene showed in the great globe I saw a silent stir of excitement run through the massed thousands about me.
In another moment, though, the globe's scene had shifted back to the Council Hall, with ourselves receiving our orders from the Council Chief, entering our captured serpent-ship and slanting up and outward, bursting past the patrolling serpent-ships, through the void of outer space, only to be captured by the other serpent-ships that had come out to meet us. Our flight then to the serpent-universe, our glimpse of the vast serpent-fleet being built, and the colossal death-beam cone, and the escape of Jhul Din appeared in swift succession. Then came our own strange captivity, our rescue by Jhul Din and escape outward from the serpent-universe through the great space- forts, and our pursuit and final rescue by the thousand Andromedan ships. Then, as our final plea, I showed the vast hordes of serpent-ships and their irresistible mighty death-beam cone sailing out from the dying universe toward our own, rushing upon our galaxy and wiping out all its races. The great globe then went dark, as I released my hold upon its studs and stepped back from it. Our mission was ended, and its success or failure lay in the hands of the massed Andromedans about us.
There was a moment of stillness, a moment in which, I knew, the fate of our universe and of all in it was being decided, a moment in which the silence of the mighty hall seemed thunderous to our strained nerves. Then I saw each of the thousands of Andromedans in the hall reach down toward two smaller metal studs that projected
