For a moment astonishment held me to the exclusion of all else. That this before me was one of the thousands of ships that had been drawn into the cloud I could not doubt.
Had all then been captured like our own by these creatures of darkness? What could it mean?
I was aware that a tremendous activity was going on far around and before me, and as I made my way cautiously through the darkness along the hull of the ship I heard a stream of creatures pouring in and out of its space-doors, busy carrying in things of metal that clanked against the doors as they went through them. Avoiding them, I moved to the side and in moments had come to another great interstellar ship that was the center of a similar scene of activity. Evidently there were a great number of them in the open space before me, and as evidently they were being prepared and fitted by these creatures of darkness for some great enterprise. But that enterprise-what could it be?
I stifled the wonder and amazement that were strong in me, though, for I realized that this swarming place was one of the most dangerous I could encounter. It was inevitable that some of the creatures would collide with me in the darkness, if I stayed there long, so reluctantly I crept back toward the street from which I had emerged.
It did not seem that street which I entered again, though, but a narrower one. There were in it fewer of the city's creatures than in the other street, though I heard still the flopping steps of many of them hastening to and from the open space and interstellar ships which I had just left. I started along it, blindly and aimlessly, not knowing whether I was going back in the direction from which I had come, and not caring greatly. For by that time it seemed clear to me that I was destined to wander blindly through the darkness of the city until discovered and captured, so slender seemed any hope that remained to me.
Still I observed all caution, crouching low each time the sound of approaching creatures came to my ears, not moving until they had passed. Once as I flattened myself thus the flap-like limb or foot of the passing thing actually touched my hand, so close did it come to me, but as I did not move the thing passed on.
After feeling through the darkness along this street for perhaps a thousand yards, my greatest worry being to avoid the creatures who emerged suddenly now and then from the doors along it, I was aware of a still narrower street that branched from it. I took this way, and soon realized that in this narrower way were few of the darkness creatures, they taking the broader streets that crossed the city. I met but one or two of the things in several thousand feet of progress along the street, and though it was harder to elude them in the narrower way I began to feel more confidence. It was that confidence that undid me, for as I passed the door of a building without my usual precautions there emerged suddenly from it one of the great creatures who collided squarely with me.
For an instant the thing must have been even more surprised than I was, and before it could realize what had happened I had flung myself upon it, for well I realized that flight would not serve me now.
My hands sought in vain for a hold upon the smooth, cold body, even as its own great flap-like arms wrapped themselves around me. The thing seemed to have no head or neck whatever, and was almost featureless also. But by the merest chance my hands in that first instant fell upon a narrow aperture in the cold flesh of the upper part of the body. Instantly I closed my hand over it, and as a strangled flute-cry came from it I realized that I had found the monster's mouth. Holding tightly to it and encircling its great body with my other arm I wrestled wildly with it there in the darkness of the narrow street as it sought to shake me off.
The strength of its flap-arms was tremendous, but they were impeded by the fact that I had partly pinned them against its body. Yet it was whirling me this way and that with tremendous force, against the walls and paving of the street.
Nothing but choking sounds came from it, though, and I realized that the creature was air-breathing even as I was and that my hold upon its mouth-aperture was throttling it. Desperately I clung to retain the hold, and with a strength as desperate the great thing tried to tear me loose. I knew that a single cry would bring a swarm of the things to the aid of this one, and the knowledge steeled my muscles. The wild threshing of the creature seemed rapidly lessening, and in moments more my strangling hold had done its work and with a few convulsive jerks the monster went limp and dead.
I straightened from it, panting, then froze with renewed terror. Along the narrow street other steps were approaching me, somewhat lighter steps that were moving carefully as though in investigation, halting now and then. As they came level with me they halted again, and I held my breath. But in the next instant came the sound of the steps coming straight toward me!
With something like a cry of despair on my lips I threw myself forward at the approaching one through the darkness. I knew myself discovered, expected, even as I leaped, the flute-like cry that would bring the hordes in the neighboring streets upon me. But to my utter amazement, my hands grasped not another cold and bulky-bodied creature of darkness but a tall, erect man-like form that was making no resistance to me! I felt short, flat bat-like wings behind that body, felt a man-like head with big-beaked countenance, and then felt two muscular arms grasping my shoulders while a voice whispered tensely in my ear in the tongue of the galaxy.
'Quiet!' it whispered. 'Another sound will bring them here from the other street!'
'You-' I stammered. 'You're from the galaxy outside-you speak its tongue-but how in this darkness-'
'Not now!' the other warned. 'I'll explain in a moment, but now we've got to get out of this street and get this dead thing out before it's discovered. Here-this way-'
Moving through the rayless opacity as a man in a dream might move, I felt myself guided by the other back to the body of the thing I had slain. We lifted it between us and my companion went a little along the street until he turned into a narrow aperture between two smooth-walled structures. Into this we cast the bulky body, and then crouched down together by it. The other had moved through the darkness as easily as through light, I had found, and my first whispered words as we crouched together were of his ability to do so.
'Here,' he answered, 'these disks-upon your eyes-'
As he spoke he was taking from somewhere on his person two flat little disks an inch or so across, one of which he fastened upon each of my eyes by means of vacuum-sucked rims. I uttered an involuntary cry of astonishment; for as I looked through those disks of glass, the utter darkness that had been about me since first we had been drawn into the great cloud gave way instantly to a pulsing violet light that illumined all things around me.
I could see clearly the towering walls of the two buildings between which we crouched, the narrow street outside in which I had had my battle, and my companion also. He was, I saw, in truth a tall bat-winged figure with strong beaked face and intelligent dark eyes, and I recognized him at once as one of the bat-folks who inhabit the worlds of the sun Deneb. Deneb! Thought of it brought flashing back to my mind a thing that the Chief had told us before our start, and I seized my companion's arm.
'Zat Zanat!' I cried. 'You're Zat Zanat, the scientist of Deneb who went into the cloud years ago to explore it!'
He nodded. 'I am Zat Zanat,' he acknowledged, 'and years it has been, in truth, since I came into this cosmic cloud, this place of darkness and horror unutterable.'
'But it's not darkness to you!' I exclaimed, pointing to the two disks which he wore before his own eyes. 'With these you can see in this absolute blackness-though I don't know how.'
'I can tell you that soon enough,' he said, 'but you-how comes it that you were roaming this city of the creatures of darkness?'
Swiftly I explained to him how we had been sent to investigate the drawing in of thousands of the galaxy's ships into the cloud, and how having been drawn into it ourselves we had been captured and brought to this city where I had made my escape. He listened intently, nodding once or twice, and when I had finished asked a question.
'You wandered into one of the great masses of captured interstellar ships they are preparing. But did you guess why they drew those ships into the cloud, for what they are preparing them?'
At my negative his expression grew solemn. 'They are preparing those thousands of captured ships, Dur Nal,' he said, 'for an enterprise that means horror to our galaxy: they are preparing to burst out of the cosmic cloud upon the galaxy in all their numbers and seize our suns and worlds in a conquest of darkness!'
'Of darkness?' I repeated, and he nodded.
'Within hours they leave this world and the cosmic cloud, to pour out into the galaxy, for even as we talk here their great plans are coming to their climax-plans that I have seen them form and carry out in the years I have been here.
'For it is years I have spent on this world of darkness in the great cloud. You have heard how years ago I,
