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 cruisers 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 bloodlust 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 bolls from the thousands of cubes beneath fell short of us in our wild upward rush. Up-up-upward from that central world we shot, and outward. The cube-ships beneath were taken by surprise for the moment, then massed also and leapt up after us. And now, a scant six cruisers remaining of all the thousand 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!'
III
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
